Commentary
Mach Speed Learning: Values, Vision, Risk, and the AI Shift

By Joshua W. Stafford, Ed.D.

A sprint versus a marathon? Maybe a horse and buggy versus a Model T versus a Supersonic Concorde? When you think about it, a great deal of it boils down to horsepower and innovation, how to harness it, and how we as humans are able to turn it into production. The world seems to be getting faster, or do we just have access to more horsepower?

New York to London travel times, depending on trade winds and currents, were 35 to 60 days, had you sailed the Santa María. That dropped to roughly five to seven days on the Titanic. It then dropped to approximately seven hours on a modern jet and then to under 3.5 hours on the supersonic Concorde. The Concorde once made the trip in a record 2 hours, 52 minutes, and 59 seconds. Even more mind-boggling is that the seven days to three hours progression – the Titanic to the Concorde – was made in less than one lifetime.

As superintendent, I am entrusted to keep up with innovation to ensure that students are given access to maximum opportunity. I serve with a philosophy driven by questions: “Is this school good enough for the kids that I love?” and “Am I preparing students for their future, or my past?” These questions serve as a litmus test for each decision that I am entrusted to be a part of and each opportunity that I am given to lead through.

Artificial intelligence has yet again brought about drastic exponential growth in our access to horsepower and innovation. How do we handle it? How do we harness it? How do we use it for good? We certainly don’t want supersonic booms above our houses all day long, but we do want to get there faster.

Not long ago, I watched a student run through a practice round with a speech coach. She was getting real-time feedback on her argument structure, her word choice, and her logical flow. She would pause, adjust, and try again. The coach was patient, precise, and available at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. The coach was built by one of her teachers on Claude, an AI tool. The coaching was done by Claude, an AI platform, via a learning model built by one of her teachers.

That moment crystallized something for me that I think every board of education needs to wrestle with. This is not an upgrade to our jet that makes the seat more comfortable. This is not a smarter search engine or a faster way to build a worksheet. What I watched that evening was a student in intellectual dialogue with a technology that was meeting her where she was and pushing her to be better. A technology harnessed well. A Concorde breaking the sound barrier. Yes, it is scary and intimidating while thrilling and exhilarating all at the same time.

Artificial intelligence represents a genuine generational shift. The question for boards is not whether to engage with that reality, but whether to engage with it strategically and yoke the power to drive results, outcomes, and opportunities for students. Do we let it scare us, or thrill us to drive innovation? The districts that serve their students well through this moment will be those whose boards and teams understand early that this requires more than policy. It requires values, vision, and risk.

Values
Change is inevitable. But some things don’t change, and they don’t need to. Vibration and shock absorption were important, as represented in the leaf springs and leather straps of the buggy, protecting riders from rocky dirt paths, and in the hydraulic dampeners and pressurized cabins protecting passengers from turbulence in the Concorde. Whether we are crossing the Atlantic in eight weeks or three hours, the physical need for stability remains constant. The same is true for the human soul. The need for solid teaching will never change; it is the “shock absorption” that allows a young person to navigate a jarring world without breaking. As the Proverb says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ (Proverbs 22:6).

Vision
While a horse might know the way home and a Concorde relies on inertial navigation, both require a pilot to make the high-level decisions that technology cannot. Information is not wisdom, and speed is not direction. We must still raise boys and girls to be young men and women of substance, to be critical thinkers who can distinguish what is true from what is merely loud, and to be compassionate leaders who understand that the fuel of progress is worthless without a moral destination. We are essentially equipping vessels of character. In an era of Mach speed change, we ensure that while the tools evolve, the traveler is anchored in the solid rock that remains unshakable, with a core of integrity.

Risk
All of life is a risk. We must acknowledge that and then do risk calculations. Many have kicked themselves for not taking the risk. I mean really, how many people wished they would have jumped in with Apple in 1995? A $10,000 investment would be worth approximately $9.7 million in 2026. Seems simple in hindsight, but there were CEO changes and stock splits, along with crash-and-burn tech debut events. Risk, risk, and more risk. For school districts, that is where school boards and leaders come into play, serving as risk mitigators and calculators.

Data privacy is one of the concerns. The board’s role is to set the guardrails so that the Concorde doesn’t fly off course. Illinois law (Public Act 104-0399) requires the Illinois State Board of Education to provide statewide guidance for school districts and educators on the use of artificial intelligence. School districts must ensure that any tools used by staff or students meet appropriate security standards. We must be vigilant about the personal information AI models might ingest. Boards must ensure AI adoption remains Student Online Personal Protection Act (SOPPA) compliant and protects students.

Another concern is academic integrity. Because AI can produce written work so quickly, schools must continue developing strategies to ensure that students are demonstrating their own understanding and learning. This often requires adjusting instructional practices and assessments to emphasize process, discussion, and critical thinking. We are already experiencing a shift in some classrooms back to the tried-and-true method of pencil and paper. We have instructors who have students closing Chromebooks and other technology tools and putting them under their seats, defaulting to the pencil and paper, a technology that has been changing the world for over two millennia.

I have a great deal of respect for these instructors who are wise enough to not jump wholesale on the latest bandwagons. This takes a great deal of maturity and fortitude. The noise of the media, vendors, and general society can be overwhelming. The latest bandwagon concept is not new; it is just the next thing. We must all learn to never jump on to be taken for a ride, but instead watch the bandwagon, pull the things off the wagon that are helpful, and then let the wagon roll on through.

AI is a liar. We must equip and empower students and adults to realize that checking and validating information with original sources will, in this life, be a requirement for establishing factual information. I recently had a very informed and connected colleague tell me that suburban THSD 214 in Illinois was the second largest by student headcount. I explained that it wasn’t. She was insistent that it was. I had to refer her to ISBE spreadsheets and the Illinois School Report Card. She then explained that she had come across her information via a widely used AI tool that had presented the wrong information in a very convincing manner. It lied. Very scary, but frankly not a new issue. In all reality, this issue has plagued humanity since The Garden, one that transcends time and requires solid human teaching.

Experts warned the U.S. Senate in early 2026 that the mass distribution of screens in schools, while well-intentioned, may be harming cognitive development. In congressional testimony Jared Cooney Horvath, Ph.D., a cognitive neuroscientist, spoke to cognitive drain in schools. He testified that performance has dropped among students who use computers for five hours a day in school, scoring significantly lower than those who rarely use them. He argued that the physical act of learning on a screen versus paper changes how the brain retains information, and often for the worse. He warned that school boards and federal policies have unintentionally turned classrooms into a primary source of excessive screen time through 1:1 device use. Psychologist Jean Twenge, Ph.D., pointed out to Congress that the mental health crisis (depression, anxiety, self-harm) spiked exactly when smartphones and social media became ubiquitous. She framed the current era as a “phone-based childhood” that has replaced real-world social interaction and sleep.

The Upsides
When used with intention, AI does not just support education; it empowers it. The schools that get this right will not simply look like schools with better tools; they will look like schools where students, teachers, and leaders are more capable, confident, and connected to their own potential. They will be schools that are able to keep up with the fast world while at the same time keeping the main thing that main thing.

At the teaching and learning level, empowerment is concrete and visible. Imagine a student working through a challenging critical thinking prompt from their teacher, not Googling a quick answer, but talking it through with an AI that pushes back, asks follow-up questions, and helps them arrive at a more informed, genuine conclusion that is their own. This is called personalized differentiated learning. We have talked about it for decades but have not had the resources to do it. Artificial intelligence can allow us to accomplish what has been largely theory and turn it into practice. Cue the Mission Impossible theme song.

Now stop imagining and take a trip with me to Singapore, with the Fulbright Scholar program and the United States Department of State. I was able to witness firsthand, from the Ministry of Education to the classroom, the implementation of the AI-enabled Adaptive Learning System (ALS) integrated into the Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS). It is a national platform that acts as a personalized differentiated learning tool. Sound scary?

Well, there are still teachers in every classroom, lab space, and learning commons. The ALS is freeing them to do what only they can do. Please don’t miss that statement. The ALS is freeing teachers up to do the things that only they can do.

Does this mean an adjustment on the part of educators, away from reviewing the initial drafts of research papers, grading assignments, and tedious data analysis, to a role that allows them to be more focused on data-informed instructional adjustments in a real-time manner? Does it allow them to have more time in the day to spend one-on-one time with meeting individual students’ needs? Does it allow them the ability to maximize their expertise as an instructor and mentor to focus on the development of critical thinking for their students, designing richer, more meaningful learning experiences that demand genuine thinking from students?

That is not a small thing. That is the whole game. Yes, in the same way that technology has allowed the travel time on either side of the pond, 60 days down to three hours, this time should be recaptured for allowing teachers to do what only they can do! Have any of the teachers you know added coal to the stove this winter? Oh yes, that’s right, the classroom is preheated before any human arrives.

As I look through the leadership lens and reflect on over two decades as an educator, I realize that much like travel, the pace of the work has sped up. Even though I pride myself on being a marathon-type runner, both literally and figuratively, a marathon pace doesn’t keep up with sprint-style changes. I am growing to learn that AI is one tool that allows educational leaders, who use it as a strategic capacity multiplier, to keep pace.

For districts that have long operated in survival mode, that shift can be significant. The path from surviving to thriving is now accessible to more school leaders. It requires leaders who know how to use these tools purposefully and strategically. A school board’s role in this must be to provide encouragement, resources, and environment for school leaders to make the shifts.

Truly, school boards can either kill innovation or create an environment and build a culture in which innovation is the norm and thrives throughout the district. I have been fortunate to work with boards, communities, and staff that have aggressively established clear values, built strategic vision, and taken well-calculated risks. As a result, Vienna HSD 13-3 has grown into being a career-connected, early college, opportunity expander that is sought after by national researchers to determine why it is an outlier in school report card data, 5 Essential results, and numerous other metrics.

Innovation is inevitable, but impact is a choice. Whether we are traveling by sail or by silicon, our litmus test remains the same: Is this good enough for the kids we love the most? If the answer is yes, then we must have the courage to yoke this new horsepower and drive our students toward the limitless opportunities to prepare them for their futures.

Joshua W. Stafford, Ed.D., is Superintendent of Vienna HSD 13-3, a nationally recognized model for comprehensive, early college, and career-connected education.