Super Teacher offers AI tutoring to 20K families at $15 monthly

Super Teacher, an AI-powered tutoring startup founded by former Google product manager Tim Novikoff, is offering elementary school tutoring for just $15 per month to address the accessibility gap in private education support. The four-year-old company has attracted roughly 20,000 families and secured partnerships with public schools across New York, New Jersey, and Hawaii, positioning itself as a Startup Battlefield Top 20 finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.

The accessibility problem: Traditional tutoring remains out of reach for most American families, despite being highly effective for educational outcomes.

• A 2023 survey found that fewer than 10% of students in the nation’s largest school districts received tutoring services.
• Private tutoring typically costs hundreds or thousands of dollars monthly, creating significant barriers for many families.
• Novikoff observed this disparity firsthand as a former math teacher, noting that nearly all students at elite Stuyvesant High School received tutoring while many students in Harlem did not.

How Super Teacher works: The app features animated AI tutors with generated voices that guide students through interactive, voice-based lessons designed specifically for elementary school students.

• Unlike many edtech tools, Super Teacher avoids large language models in favor of a deterministic system designed to always provide correct answers.
• Students engage with the app through conversational voice interactions, mimicking the experience of working with a human tutor.
• The platform focuses exclusively on elementary school students, an age group Novikoff says is underserved by most edtech companies.

In plain English: Instead of using AI that generates responses on the fly (which can sometimes make mistakes), Super Teacher uses a pre-programmed system with predetermined correct answers—like having a textbook with verified solutions rather than asking someone to solve problems from scratch each time.

What they’re saying: Novikoff emphasizes that AI tutors should complement rather than replace human teachers in educational settings.

• “[Tutoring] is by far the most effective intervention that can be provided to kids for education, and it’s not even close,” Novikoff said. “It’s really unfair that not everyone gets this opportunity. That’s why I’m pursuing a mission to democratize access to private tutoring.”
• He positions AI tutors as educational tools similar to smart boards or calculators rather than teacher replacements.

Growth trajectory: Super Teacher plans to expand its reach across age groups and school districts nationwide.

• The company aims to extend its services to younger and older grade levels beyond elementary school.
• Novikoff hopes to partner with additional school districts across the United States.
• His previous entrepreneurial success includes founding Fly Labs, a mobile video-editing app that Google acquired in 2015.