Top Queens HS bans take-home essays over AI cheating fears

An elite Queens high school is forcing students to ditch keyboards for pens as way to stop them from using ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools to cheat, The Post has learned.

In a move that has some students fuming, Townsend Harris HS is ending its long-standing policy of letting kids type summer reading essays at home, and instead making them complete the graded assignment by hand during the first weeks of September.

The assignment, a back-to-school rite of passage, typically requires students to read a book over the summer for their English class and turn in a written essay when they return to class.

“We’ve noticed too much use of artificial intelligence in the past and think in-class will allow for a more authentic representation of student thinking,” English teacher Brian Sweeney told The Classic, the student-run newspaper.

Critics argue the policy unfairly lumps all students together and could make the assignment more about speed than actual comprehension.

“I think it’s unfair that we are being held accountable for other students’ misusing AI,” one student told The Classic.

Another incoming student griped that she prefers at-home assignments for time management and that the new rule “brings a problem to people who struggle with writing at a faster pace.”

Yasmeen Ismail, a junior and co-editor-in-chief of The Classic, called the change a reasonable first step.

“Long term, we need policies that go beyond just restricting improper use,” she told The Post.

Defending the move, rising senior and fellow co-editor-in-chief Ryan Chen said it will help keep the assignment fair.

“This heavily encourages students to physically read the book cover-to-cover instead of using AI to give them a summary and an analysis in minutes,” he said.

The policy comes amid mounting tension in classrooms nationwide with AI driving a wave of copy-and-paste schoolwork. Inconsistent rules are leaving kids confused — and pressured to cheat just to keep up, they say.

Many Gen Z students now rely on AI to get through school, with 97% of 2,000 high school and college kids in a May survey saying they’ve used tools like ChatGPT.

“It’s really hard to be a student who’s trying to follow the rules right now,” Scheherazade Schonfeld, a rising junior at Hunter College HS, a top-performing public school run by CUNY, told The Post. “It feels almost competitive, like not using [AI] puts you at a disadvantage.”

Her school doesn’t have a blanket ban on AI, and ChatGPT is routinely used by many classmates, she said. Some teachers openly allow it, while others consider it cheating. The rules vary from class to class, and enforcement is inconsistent, Schonfeld said.

Schonfeld estimated that Hunter College HS is “only catching 10% of the [AI use] cases, probably less,” though the lack of formal rules means teachers aren’t always watching for it.

Kim Hong, a junior at a Holmdel High School in New Jersey, said she’s seen students in her school get flagged over AI suspicion for something as minor as using the word “underscore” in an essay.

The lack of clarity has left both students and teachers scrambling.

“High school should be where you learn how to write and how to think,” Schonfeld told The Post. “ChatGPT hasn’t eliminated the need for that, but teachers also need to show us how to use it the smart way. That’s hard, because they’re learning right alongside us.”

Townsend HS’ crackdown comes at odds with a broader shift in education policy.

NYC’s Department of Education lifted a 2023 ban on ChatGPT just months after announcing it but still hasn’t issued clear rules on student usage. The DOE says it’s developing an AI framework and recently launched an AI Policy Lab to help schools navigate ethical implementation.

And last month, the United Federation of Teachers joined it’s parent, the American Federation of Teachers, in a $23 million partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic to train educators on how to use AI in the classroom. A new “National Center for AI” will open inside the UFT’s Lower Manhattan headquarters.

Punya Mishra, director of the Learning Futures Institute at Arizona State University, said Townsend should be focusing on bringing AI into the classroom, rather than locking it out.

“Handwriting essays in class can make sense in certain cases,” Mishra said. “But blanket policies like this take away educators’ ability to teach students how to work with AI critically and wisely.”

Frances Kweller, director of the Manhattan- and Queens-based tutoring company Kweller Prep, celebrated Townsend’s approach as a necessary step.

“This is reality. AI is the future,” she said. “You need to make sure students know how to be independent thinkers.”