Higher Performance Insights | THINK AGAIN: What We Call Cheating Is Now Called Tuesday
May 27, 2025
When yesterday's violations become tomorrow's job requirements
Here's what happened while you were drafting policies about AI violations:
- 90% of college students used ChatGPT within sixty days of its launch.¹
- AI benchmark scores jumped 18.8, 48.9, and 67.3 percentage points in twelve months.²
- AI costs dropped 280-fold in eighteen months.³
Meanwhile, it took us twenty years to get computers into classrooms.⁴
The Uncomfortable Math
Your students aren't cheating. They're practicing.
Every "violation" you detect is a rehearsal for their actual careers. The collaboration you penalize? That's how every successful team operates. Are you banning AI assistance? That's how every knowledge worker will work.
Are we teaching students to succeed in 1995 while they're preparing for 2030?
What Are We Really Afraid Of?
It's not that students are using AI to think less; they're using AI to think differently.
And we don't know how to measure that kind of thinking.
The Real Question
The question isn't how to stop AI use.
The question is: What happens to institutions that teach students to avoid the tools that will define their professional lives?
Answer: They become as relevant as typing schools that banned word processors.
Think Again About This
When Chappaqua Central School District adopted its AI integration policy, it didn't ask "How do we prevent this?"
They asked, "How do we channel this?"⁵
When UTSA created its Student AI Partner Internship, it didn't ask, "How do we control students?"
They asked, "How do we learn with them?"⁶
The Answers Are Already Here
Stop looking for external salvation. Your faculty experimenting with AI integration? They're generating the insights you need. Your students seamlessly blending creativity with AI assistance? They're showing you what authentic learning looks like.
The classroom isn't broken, but your assumptions about modern learning might be.
What Changes This Week
The AI your students use today will be exponentially more powerful by homecoming, 2025. By fall of 2025, we'll have AI agents that can complete multi-step projects independently, models that seamlessly handle text, audio, video, and code simultaneously, and tools so integrated into daily workflows that using them will be as natural as using a search engine.
Your policies, procedures, and professional development timelines are not designed for this.
But many of your students will be. How will you keep them?
Fear Is the Enemy of Leadership
Here's what we know about transformative change: it requires courage, not a comfortable cadence.
When institutions approach innovation defensively—building policies around what students can't do and designing systems to detect and punish—they miss the opportunity to lead.
But your educators? Most of them are natural innovators. You've always adapted to serve your students better. You've navigated technology shifts before. You know how to turn challenges into learning opportunities.
The difference now is simply velocity.
Fear and creativity can't operate in the same space. Leadership requires curiosity, and education—real education—requires both.
The learning leaders already experimenting with AI integration? They're not failing their profession—they're pioneering its future. They understand that you can't teach students to navigate an AI-powered world from a position of avoidance.
The Choice You're Actually Making
You can spend this summer figuring out how to detect AI use, or you can spend it figuring out how to direct AI use.
Your people won't have the capacity to do both.
One of these approaches prepares students for the world they'll actually live in.
The Bottom Line
This isn't about technology disrupting education; this is about education catching up to how learning actually works.
The most effective learning has always been collaborative, iterative, and application-focused. The most valuable skills have always been judgment, creativity, and synthesis.
AI didn't change what good education looks like; AI just made it impossible to pretend that information hoarding was ever good education.
Your students are already living in the future. Your job isn't to slow them down; your job is to help them navigate that future more thoughtfully.
The question isn't whether you'll adapt but whether you'll lead the adaptation.
What are you going to tell your students in September?
More importantly—what are you going to learn from them?
YOUR TURN
Leadership Team Discussion Question:
If we discovered that our current policies were accidentally training students to avoid the primary tools they'll use in their careers, how quickly would we change those policies?
Now: What's different about AI?
The follow-up: What would we need to see, hear, or experience this summer to feel confident leading with curiosity instead of caution when classes begin?
References:
- New York Magazine, "ChatGPT in Schools: Here's Where It's Banned—and How It Could Potentially Help Students," based on January 2023 survey data
- Stanford AI Index 2025: AI benchmark performance on MMMU, GPQA, and SWE-bench between 2023-2024
- Stanford AI Index 2025: Cost reduction for GPT-3.5 equivalent model performance, November 2022 to October 2024
- Purdue University College of Education: Technology adoption timeline showing 97% of classrooms had computers with internet access by 2009, up from 25% with computers in 1986
- Chappaqua Central School District Policy 5110 on Generative Artificial Intelligence Integration, adopted August 29, 2024
- UTSA Today: "New UTSA internship empowers students to lead in AI innovation," April 28, 2025
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Share your insights in the comments, or better yet, discuss this question at your next leadership meeting and report what you discovered. What surprised you most? REFERENCES Center for Creative Leadership. (2024). Why new leaders fail: The hidden costs of poor team integration. CCL Research Report, 14(2), 23-41. Deloitte. (2023). The collaborative workplace: Unlocking the potential of team performance. Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends, 45-62. Gallup. (2024). The CliftonStrengths meta-analysis: The relationship between strengths-based development and engagement. Gallup Research, 18(3), 112-128. Hogan Assessment Systems. (2024). Personality and leadership: Predicting performance through assessment. Hogan Research Division Technical Report TR-724. Johnson, M., & Smith, K. (2023). Learning retention in executive education: A longitudinal study. Columbia Business School Research Paper No. 23-12. Mathieu, J. E., Luciano, M. M., D'Innocenzo, L., Klock, E. A., & LePine, J. A. (2023). The development and construct validity of a team mental models measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(5), 789-815. McKinsey & Company. (2024). Building capabilities for performance: From learning to impact. McKinsey Quarterly, 2, 78-91. Multi-Health Systems. (2023). Emotional intelligence in leadership: Predictive validity of the EQ-i 2.0. MHS Technical Report TR-2023-04. Myers & Briggs Foundation. (2022). MBTI Manual: A guide to the development and use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument (4th ed.). Consulting Psychologists Press. Rozovsky, J. (2024). Project Aristotle: What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. Google People Analytics White Paper. Senge, P., & Edmondson, A. (2024). Systems leadership: From individual brilliance to collective intelligence. Harvard Business School Working Paper 24-076. Wiley. (2023). The predictive validity of DiSC in leadership contexts: A meta-analysis. Wiley Research Division Technical Report WP-2023-11. Woolley, A. W., Aggarwal, I., & Malone, T. W. (2023). Collective intelligence and group performance. Harvard Business Review, 101(3), 78-89. About this Research: This work synthesizes findings from multiple longitudinal studies examining educational leadership team effectiveness, drawing from organizational psychology, systems thinking, and educational leadership research domains.
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Your teachers, staff, students, and parents aren't simply recipients of directives—they bring essential wisdom to the table. Design inclusive decision-making processes that genuinely incorporate diverse perspectives. 4. Develop versatile leadership approaches. Burro racers prepare for varied conditions—from sprint starts in town to technical trail sections in the backcountry. Educational leaders similarly need flexible approaches for different challenges: a collaborative style for curriculum development, a more directive approach during safety emergencies, and a coaching stance for teacher development. 5. Celebrate diverse forms of excellence. In Cerrillos, teams competed for various recognitions, including the playful "last ass" award for the final finisher. Create a campus culture that honors different forms of contribution, not just test scores and academic achievements, but also compassion, creativity, perseverance, and community building. Leading Forward Together The burro racers of New Mexico demonstrate that success isn't about domination—it's about creating genuine partnerships, building trust, and navigating challenging terrain together. This lesson feels especially relevant as schools and colleges face unprecedented challenges. Educational reforms imposed without stakeholder buy-in typically fail, while those developed through authentic partnership gain momentum even through difficult implementation phases. For a deeper look at this fascinating sport and its surprising parallels to educational leadership, read the full AP News article: Burro racing wins over runners in backcountry ode to mining history YOUR TURN Consider a persistent challenge in your educational community where progress seems stalled. What if resistance isn't obstruction but a signal of caution or a desire for clarity? What might your stakeholders be sensing that you haven't yet recognized? How might approaching this challenge through partnership rather than authority create new possibilities? Share a time when listening to resistance actually improved an initiative. What did you learn about leadership through that experience? Like the burro racers navigating historic mining trails, effective educational leaders honor tradition while forging new paths forward—not by commanding, but by partnering. References Associated Press. (2025, May 3). Burro racing wins over runners in backcountry ode to mining history. AP News. Retrieved from https://apnews.com/article/wild-burro-racing-donkey-mining-new-mexico-9f20f6736401139529c8946162b97046 Fullan, M. (2019). Nuance: Why some leaders succeed and others fail. Corwin Press. Hargreaves, A., & O'Connor, M. T. (2018). Collaborative professionalism: When teaching together means learning for all. Corwin Press. Heifetz, R. A., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The practice of adaptive leadership: Tools and tactics for changing your organization and the world. Harvard Business Press. Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. Weigand, S. (2025, May 3). Personal interview. Cerrillos Burro Race, New Mexico.