No it’s not.

Anyone who wanted to cheat on a take-home essay or assignment always could, and anyone who has to write an essay in-class monitored for more critical and competitive standardized tests cannot be pulling out their devices and typing into chatGPT, which doesn’t write A+ essays that a teacher can’t detect are “a little off” anyway.

As a former educator myself, I always knew which students had mastered the material and could intelligently talk about it in class discussions, during office hours, and through in-class essays/quizzes where they could not cheat while I closely monitored. They couldn’t get an A+ by simply cheating on a few of the take-home essays, and the typical cheaters are cheating just to get by and still end up with inferior grades to those who master the subject.

Furthermore, concentrating too much on catching cheaters takes away from time you could be spending enriching the learning experience of everyone else.

It also sounds corny but is true: When you cheat, you’re only cheating yourself. Cheating really is self-policing in many instances. When we interview candidates who have a degree and a high GPA, it’s very obvious of they just got good grades but are clueless and we don’t hire them. It might be cheating, or maybe grade inflation, or perhaps just short-term memorizing but not actually retaining or understanding what they were learning, but it’s night and day.

Those who truly care to learn will excel in their jobs and get better promotions. ChatGPT isn’t going to help you there.

Having said that, I would consider possibly modifying the curriculum you only give take-home work that is 90% of the grade and can, but it’s not worth stressing over. Put your effort into teaching and enriching the lives of those who want to learn and yearn for knowledge. You’re an educator first, and police work is just a side gig you can’t ignore, but isn’t your main purpose.