Super Teacher is building an AI tutor for elementary schools — catch it at Disrupt 2025

Tutoring is one of them most effective tools for improving a child’s education, yet very few children in the US receive it. A 2023 survey of the nation’s largest school districts found that less than 10% of students received tutoring. One factor is that tutoring is too expensive for many families, often costing hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.

Tim Novikoff, former Google product manager and teacher, wants to change that. His startup, Super Teacher, offers an AI-powered tutoring app for elementary school students that costs $15 per month, or $10 with an annual subscription. Super Teacher aims to make private tutoring accessible to families across the country.

The four-year-old startup is gaining popularity. Novikoff says about 20,000 families have signed up for Super Teacher, and public schools in New York, New Jersey and Hawaii are now using the app. Super Teacher is a Startup Battlefield Top 20 finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in San Francisco.

Novikoff was previously a math teacher in New York City, first in Harlem and then at a highly regarded public school, Stuyvesant High School. In an interview with TechCrunch, he said that almost all Stuyvesant students received tutoring, while many students in Harlem did not, and that the difference in their educational experience was stark.

“[Tutoring] is by far the most effective intervention that can be provided to children in terms of education, and it’s not even close,” Novikoff said. “It’s really unfair that not everyone gets this opportunity. That’s why I’m on a mission to democratize access to private tutoring.”

Super Teacher’s app features animated teachers with AI-generated voices that guide students through interactive lessons. Students talk to the app using their voice, just like in a conversation with a teacher. But unlike many other edtech tools, Super Teacher doesn’t use large language models to generate responses. Instead, the content comes from a deterministic system designed to always provide correct answers – avoiding the inaccuracies that can plague LLMs.

Novikoff thinks AI teachers can have a valuable impact on children’s lives, but he is confident that AI will never replace teachers in a school environment. He calls AI teachers a tool that teachers can use, like smart boards or calculators, rather than a replacement for them.

Super Teacher is only available to elementary school students, a decision Novikoff made to help his own children and because few edtech companies target that age group. Looking ahead, he hopes to expand to younger and older grades and work with more school districts across the US

Novikoff founded earlier Fly Labs, a mobile video editing app acquired by Google in 2015.

If you want to learn more about Super Teacher from the company itself—while also checking out dozens of others, hearing their pitches, and listening to guest speakers on four different stages—come to Disrupt, October 27-29 in San Francisco. Read more here.