The Revival of Bluebooks

Before this school year, all senior school English electives concluded with a final paper. As English teacher Amelia Audette said, “[students] wrote final papers during exam review week which has been the tradition for a while.” 

However, this year, the assessment format changed. Seniors took the Shakespeare exam, only juniors took the elective exam, and most essays are handwritten in class, sometimes in more than one Bluebook. Previously, the proportion of in-class versus out-of-class work depended largely on teachers’ preference, but this year, “at least 50% needs to be in class writing, and I can promise you that number will be higher next year,” said English teacher and English department chair, Joe Addison. 

The reason behind this shift? A surge in AI use and cheating. From a faculty’s perspective, Addison sees the situation as a broad increase in cheating, “cheating exploded in the spring of last year. It became totally untenable to have students write take home papers at the end of the term, because the amount of cheating we would find as a department would be extremely high.” AI can generate an essay in a fraction of time by the user inputting a few sentences in. Audette stated that “we are eliminating the temptation, so [students] can write their best in a safer space.”

The students' perspective is similar. Molly Calderone ’27 acknowledges that “because of AI, it is so much easier to cheat on essays, so teachers want to make sure [situations] are airtight.” Mikoto Araki-Siegenfeld ’26 stated that “AI [prompted the change] because I feel teachers don't trust the kids these days, for good reason,” that being AI’s accessibility. 

In response to the new assessment format, upperclassmen have varying opinions. Araki-Siegenfeld, who took the Shakespeare exam, stated, “I liked the exam because whenever I have an essay, I overthink and spend [too long] every time.” On the other hand, Calderone said that “I never do my best work on English exams because it's so much stress for something that you usually do with more time.” Not only is there pressure to produce readable work in a short time frame, the uncertainty of English exams frustrates some students. “Knowing that I have an even longer and more complex exam than last year that I have to study for is unsettling,” said Allison Solorzano ’27. Notably, 9th and 10th grade English exams were 90 minutes long while the elective exam was 120 minutes long. 

Some students also don’t fully understand how the final exam corresponds to the structure of English electives. Specifically that the things they learn in electives seem hard to be tested on, “the English electives [for upper school students] don’t really work for an exam,” stated Julius Cafiso ’27. Jamie Ganter ’27, who is taking Dark Romanticism, stated, “[Assessment of the course] should be based on how well we know the dark conventions of dark rom, not how well we've memorized the text that we've read.” Valentia Cassella ’27 said, “If we're writing an essay about every aspect of the book, why do we have to take an exam that's also about every aspect?” 

Other students are frustrated that they are being punished for others’ actions. Also, only juniors partake in the English elective term exam where both juniors and seniors take the class. Chaima Arouna ’27 said, “it's really unfair that we have to suffer the consequences of other people's actions. I understand that AI is an issue, but I don't think that all the juniors should have to take an exam just because a bunch of people used AI in their essays.” Since the term II final exam is also one-sixth of students’ term grade, “it just adds on another exam that really doesn't need to be there to drop my grade,” Arouna added. 

It seems that the ideal world where students produce their own ideas and grapple repeatedly with them is gone for now. Addison said “I think every single English teacher dreams of a world that was only four years ago where students could sit, wrestle, think, write, edit, and go back to shift, add dialog, and talk as you write a paper and bring together multiple texts.” Realistically, the quality of in class essays, completed in 55 minutes, can never compare to hours of writing and revising. Audette admits that “it limits creative writing and projects, which takes time that's hard to do in class.” 

English and other subjects continue to grapple with the changing world of AI, like other schools, even colleges. Although it’s uncertain if final exams and in class work will leave in the future, it is temporarily staying for good.