How Smartschool tackles AI exam prep, where chatbots fail

Artificial intelligence has proven remarkably adept at scouring the internet for answers, but teaching students effectively is an entirely different challenge. The difficulty intensifies when the objective shifts from general learning to performing well on high-stakes exams like the SAT and ACT.

At first glance, education might seem like a natural fit for large language models. If AI can handle customer service, surely it can replicate a teacher’s ability to provide answers. However, schooling is not a consumer transaction. Teachers and administrators are not looking for chatbots. Chatbots hallucinate. They make errors. Entrusting a student’s instruction to such a system can set their progress back by months. Educators require tools that are bullet-proof, safe, accountable, and consistent.

This reality drove the founders of Smartschool, an edtech company based in Palo Alto, to build their platform by first examining the challenges students and educators actually face. Rather than wrapping existing AI in a new interface, they invested in creating an AI tutor designed to foster genuine learning and performance under pressure. The gap between a clever chatbot and a trustworthy educational tool is precisely what Smartschool set out to close, with the SAT and ACT among the key exams it supports.

In many ways, the team was uniquely prepared for this mission. Smartschool was founded by three Polish entrepreneurs: Matt Masłowski, Paul Burzyński, and Kajetan Lewandowski. All three had experience at various tech firms and strong educational backgrounds. They also grew up in a Poland navigating a difficult economic transition, where opportunities were scarce and access to quality education was far from guaranteed.

“Coming from relatively underprivileged backgrounds, we wanted to be able to help people get great educations and make it possible to have similar stories, so long as they want to take action,” says Masłowski, Smartschool’s CEO. “Because if we keep the current education system as it is, when the whole world is changing so rapidly, we will have an extremely unfair and unequal society in the future.”

The challenges of AI-based learning

A core insight from the Smartschool team is that generic AI systems were never designed for classroom realities. This is especially true for mathematics, where large language models are prone to hallucination. They might jump ahead, skip steps, or reward incorrect answers. Such technical glitches create real problems for teachers and students, and they are partly responsible for the skepticism surrounding AI in education.

AI also cannot be one-size-fits-all in an academic setting. A successful platform must be customizable, aligning with specific curricula, state standards, and data privacy regulations.

“Most edtech tools are just wrappers around ChatGPT,” says Paul Burzyński, Smartschool’s chief product officer. “They have no understanding of what a student is actually working on in class.”

That disparity between impressive AI demonstrations and practical classroom needs is what Smartschool aimed to resolve. Burzyński led the effort to translate advanced AI capabilities into classroom-ready workflows, working directly with teachers, students, and school districts to ensure the technology supports learning rather than distracting from it.

Mathematical reasoning

At the heart of the platform is a proprietary mathematical reasoning engine, developed under Burzyński’s product vision and implemented by CTO Kajetan Lewandowski’s engineering team. Unlike general-purpose AI, Smartschool’s system was built specifically for real classroom conditions, combining educational workflows with advanced mathematical reasoning.

“It can evaluate handwritten student work, interpret diagrams and geometric constructions, and assess open-ended solutions,” Burzyński explains. “This is important because student learning is not limited to multiple-choice answers; it often involves showing reasoning steps and making mistakes that reveal thought processes.”

Rather than simply delivering answers like a GPT-powered chatbot or search engine, Smartschool provides structured feedback designed to improve student reasoning. The company reports 99.6 percent accuracy when assessing and providing feedback on high-school-level mathematics problems. The goal is not just correctness, but educational usefulness.

Under Burzyński’s leadership, the team designed the system for scale and classroom integration. It can connect with existing learning management systems, curricula, and single sign-on platforms. Teachers can assign work with one click, while student submissions are automatically graded and synced with gradebooks. Educators also receive insights into student progress and common misconceptions.

“This design ensures the technology fits into existing teaching workflows instead of forcing schools to adapt to new systems,” says Burzyński.

AI that teachers and students can trust

As CEO, Masłowski has guided Smartschool’s expansion into U. S. school districts, working closely with educators and administrators to ensure the platform delivers measurable learning outcomes. Alongside Burzyński and Lewandowski, he has helped demonstrate the system’s reliability to schools adopting AI-powered learning tools for the first time. Educators have taken notice, encouraged by early success stories. Smartschool now operates in 30 U. S. school districts, including within the New York City Department of Education and Boston Public Schools. Results are measurable. A study from the Learning Experience Design Research Institute found that 90 percent of students using the platform in Wisconsin’s Pewaukee School District met or exceeded math standards.

Investors and the media have also taken note. In April, the company raised $3 million in seed funding from private angels Mati Staniszewski (ElevenLabs), Marcin Żukowski (Snowflake), and Nick Woods (HazelHealth), as well as Inovo VC, the a16z Scout Fund, and The Explorer Fund. Several investors were early supporters of the team. Both Masłowski and Burzyński have been recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30.

According to Masłowski, building trust in a conservative market like edtech takes time, but the relationships the company is forging, grounded in experience and expertise, should endure. “Since the beginning, our focus has remained consistent,” he says. “We want to build AI that teachers can trust and that improves real educational outcomes in classrooms.”