How a Kalamazoo startup is using AI to rethink the way students take tests

Editor’s Note: This story is part of Momentum: The people and companies shaping what’s next, a weekly series that explores new ventures, founder support, and the resources powering entrepreneurship and small businesses across seven counties in Southwest Michigan. This project is sponsored by Southwest Michigan First.

KALAMAZOO, MI — What if a test could do more than measure what a student knows? What if it could immediately identify what the student missed, explain what concepts weren’t mastered, and create a path to help the student learn them — without requiring a teacher to spend hours grading papers?

That’s the promise behind TrueTest, an AI-assisted student assessment and reteaching platform developed by Kalamazoo-based Next Generation Education Inc.

The year-old company’s technology allows teachers to upload curriculum materials and test formats. TrueTest then analyzes student results, identifies missed concepts, and generates personalized study guides and retests designed to address specific gaps in understanding.

For students, the goal is to shorten the gap between making a mistake and learning how to get it right. For teachers, it could mean spending less time grading and more time teaching — while gaining a clearer picture of whether students have actually mastered the material before moving on.

“It’s a tool to support students and teachers,” said Eric Wimbley, chief executive officer and co-founder of Next Generation Education. Rather than using artificial intelligence simply to provide answers, he said, TrueTest uses the technology to assess how well students have grasped concepts and identify areas where teachers may need to re-emphasize material.

Assessing the assessment product 

The platform has been demonstrated in several out-of-state school districts and here, and it is being considered by some for initial use this fall. Pilot testing was done in the McKeesport (Pa.) Area School District, a small, 3,000-student district in suburban Pittsburgh whose leaders were enamored by the product’s potential after seeing a demonstration months ago by Next Generation Education in Texas.

Wimbley says TrueTest aligns with any curriculum and allows teachers to upload tests. “We don’t have real-time information in schools,” Wimbley says. But he says, “TrueTest is a tool that does real-time assessment.”

Speaking from a student’s perspective, he says, “Imagine this: We take a test on a Friday during the second week of school. We’ve been studying chapters one and two. The teacher doesn’t have time to correct that for a week, sometimes longer. That whole time, I’m struggling in class during weeks three and four because I missed one component. If the teacher knew in real time, they would have fixed it before they moved on. But two weeks later they find out, ‘Oh, that’s why Eric is struggling. He didn’t get A, B, and C when I explained it.'”

Von Washington, chief executive officer of The Kalamazoo Promise, says data gathering, sharing, and consumption is now happening at record speeds, and information is being delivered faster than most people can retrieve it. But information doesn’t move as quickly in the traditional student-testing environment. 

“So anytime you have the opportunity to have a tool that kind of brings this rapid consumption need by individuals — and targets personal growth for the students — then you are looking at something that becomes very beneficial to not only the educator and to the student, but to the overall school community,” he says. “This product does those things.”

Washington says he sees TrueTest ultimately being integrated into educational institutions nationally and internationally “as something that helps education keep up with the speed of technology.”

Along with Wimbley, he is a partner in Kalamazoo Forward Ventures, a $50 million, Black-owned venture capital fund that was launched in 2024 to invest in under-represented business owners and unique business start-ups. It is a major investor in the product.

Saving a teacher’s time

“TrueTest saves teachers time by providing immediate feedback for them in real time so that they can adjust their instruction to better suit the needs of the students,” says Dr. Jamie Lusebrink, director of Technology, Reporting and CTE (Career and Technical Education) at the McKeesport Area School District. “As a teacher, instead of having to grade tests after-hours, in the evenings, or on weekends, they’re getting immediate data, and then you’re able to use that data to adjust your instruction in real time so that there’s not a lag between the students’ assessments and any sort of remediation.”

As a middle school science teacher, she remembers trying to quickly score tests for the 120 students she would see in class each day. Lusebrink worked as a teacher, a school principal, and then a school administrator for more than 20 years. She continues as a school administrator but is now also an Educational Advisor for Next Generation Education.

She says teachers who have worked with the platform in demonstrations are excited. With a laugh, she says, “One teacher said they don’t know what they’re going to do with their time now. They were very much surprised at how fast the platform grades tests and that they were provided analytical data to be able to show how many kids missed question one, how many missed question two, which kids missed question one, and which kids missed question two.”

This platform vs. AI

While many educators have said they worry about students using Artificial Intelligence to do their writing, homework, and projects for them, Washington says AI is the future, and educators have to learn to work with it.

He has questions about how AI technology and traditional education can work together. “But even though I have questions, I have no doubt that we need to figure out how to make this technology work for the best benefit of the student and the educational institution,” Washington says.

Lusebrink explains that TrueTest is more of an assessment tool rather than a teaching tool, so it is not something that does the work for students.

“Our goal is not to replace anything that teachers are currently doing in the classroom,” she says. “We want to be able to give them back some of that time that they’re losing by doing paperwork and clerical things. But this way they can use that time more effectively and efficiently to help the students learn and grow and master those skills.”

She says that during pilot testing, students have been excited to see their test results immediately on their in-class laptops and work through a study guide that explains why they missed test questions.

“It was really exciting to see that feedback from the kids because they do care about what they’re learning and what they get wrong,” Lusebrink says. “They are intrinsically motivated to do well. And I think sometimes when time elapses between the assessment and getting the results, by that time the teacher has moved on to the next lesson.”

Technology is just a tool

Former educator Jeanne Hess says she thinks education “is drawing forth someone’s best self.” But in this time of required testing and needing to improve test scores, “I think teachers get burned out.”

She says, “I think that a computer is a tool that allows the freedom for the teacher to reach into a child and draw forth their best self. It is an educational tool. It’s not going to take the place of anything. It’s not taking anyone’s job. As a matter of fact, it is making someone’s job a lot more effective.”

She says she would like for TrueTest to be used in every classroom. “I think it’s genius.”

“As far as the teachers that I know, it would be a joy for them because they went into teaching to spend time with students,” says Hess. “What this tool does is it allows teachers to spend more face-to-face quality time with their students. That’s so key. That’s still what education is all about.”

How things got started

Wimbley is a Kalamazoo native who spent six years in the U.S. Army Reserves and 25 years with the Michigan State Police before becoming an educator and working as chief executive officer of the Pretty Lake Camp in Mattawan. He remembers teaching high school students in the Fall of 2012 in Allegan County’s Educational Service Agency School. 

“When I gave students an assignment in the first week of class, (I said) ‘I want you to write a one-page paper on why you’re in this class,'” he says. “I was astounded by the different levels of education that people didn’t have. I had 11th and 12th-graders reading at a fourth- and fifth-grade level.”

He says that immediately changed his approach to teaching, and he learned that most teachers adjust their teaching to address the middle of the class, in terms of their students’ capabilities. But he says, “Within weeks I was seeing that (teaching to) the middle wasn’t catching the kids at the bottom, and it wasn’t catching the kids at the top.”

During the last five years, as AI was starting to gain traction, he says he started to develop a way to use it to help all students — focusing on students in kindergarten through grade 12. He began working with Eugene Tye, a Western Michigan University graduate who has become chief technology officer and co-founder of Next Generation Education.

Wimbley also formed and is working with an eight-member advisory team that includes teachers, school principals, and program leaders such as: James Devers, chief executive officer of Communities in Schools of Kalamazoo; Dr. Freddie McGee, director of Extended Learning Programs for Battle Creek Public Schools; Von Washington, of the Kalamazoo Promise; and Dr. Nkenge Bergan, associate vice president for Student Development Services at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.

“I wanted this built by teachers, for teachers,” Wimbley says.

Where things are headed

Next Generation Education was started in July of 2025 and now employs five people, including Wimbley. He says it has cost about $600,000 thus far to get TrueTest to a point where he expects it to be used in schools this Fall. He expects that to happen in Michigan and Pennsylvania, but he would not disclose in which districts. He says about half of the start-up funding was provided by Kalamazoo Forward Ventures. The balance was provided by six angel investors who are excited by the idea of improving education.

“TrueTest will be in Pennsylvania and Michigan — guaranteed,” Wimbley says. “My goal, my hope, is to start in my hometown because that’s what I built this for from the very beginning. This is a place that’s already passionate about education, that believes in the power of education. I want it to be a part of that mission.”

Noting the city’s wealth of dedicated educational institutions, nonprofits, and charitable organizations, Hess says a Kalamazoo-based product such as TrueTest legitimizes Kalamazoo as an education city. 

“I just think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” says Hess.