HONESTY & ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

In accordance with the Griswold Public School’s mission statement and objectives, Griswold Schools will develop a culture that promotes responsibility, respect, honesty, and integrity. The Griswold High School Vision of the Graduate sets civic and social expectations for student learning including that the student accepts responsibility for his or her own actions and behavior and recognizes the importance of social and civic responsibilities to the community.

For the purposes of this policy, here on forward the term assessment refers to homework, assignments, tests, quizzes, essays, projects, and any academic work performed by a student. Acts of Academic Dishonesty are defined as, but not limited to, the following:

Plagiarism: presenting another’s work (ideas, design, words, writing) and implying that it is original. Griswold High School deciphers between Intentional Plagiarism and Unintentional Plagiarism, which are defined as follows:

Intentional Plagiarism

• Obvious, substantial, verbatim reproduction of information. Example: cutting and pasting from a source and failing to give credit to the original author

• Fabrication of sources, inventing/counterfeiting sources, falsification of page numbers, or other deliberate mis-documentation

• Submission of others’ work as the student’s own. Example: having a parent or another person write an essay and submit it as one’s own work, purchasing or copying pre-written papers, work completed with a tutor or other instructional aide reflecting the tutor or instructional aide has done the majority of the work, etc.

Unintentional Plagiarism

• Inadequate paraphrasing

• Improper citation or documentation that misrepresents a source

• Insufficient citation of factual information not held to be common knowledge (common knowledge is defined as facts readily available from a variety of sources)

• Poor integration of direct quotations with the student’s own writing

• Paraphrasing/summarizing an unoriginal thought without proper citation and/or acknowledgement to the person who originated the thought.

Cheating: deliberately seeking one’s own gain or assisting in another’s gain in academic, extracurricular, or other school work in order to (or with the intent to) obtain an unfair advantage. Examples: unauthorized exchange of information during a test or while others are taking a test, using unauthorized materials to complete an assessment, unpermitted collaboration on assessments (including copying another student’s work), sharing test questions, selling/supplying your work, etc.

Lying or Committing a Fraud: to make a statement one knows is false, with the intent to deceive the evaluator or with disregard for the truth; to give a false impression. Examples: fabrication of data or information, citing sources in a bibliography not used in the academic exercise in order to meet a minimum requirement of sources, changing a grade in a teacher’s grade book.

Multiple submissions: submitting substantial portions of any academic exercise more than once without prior authorization and approval of the teacher. Examples: Turning in the same paper for Freshman English and Sophomore English.

Stealing: encompasses taking or appropriating without the right or permission to do so and with the intent to keep or improperly use the school work or materials of another student or the instructional materials of a teacher. Example: stealing copies of tests or quizzes, stealing another student’s homework.

Determination of Academic Dishonesty

Parents and school counselors must be informed immediately by the teacher(s) involved when a student is suspected of Academic Dishonesty. Teachers will complete an Office Referral to be submitted to the Student Supervisor and provide documented evidence of the misconduct. The Student Supervisor/Associate Principal and Library Media Specialist will review the information and determine if evidence exists to show that academic dishonesty has occurred and, if so, what definition applies. The Student Supervisor/Associate Principal will inform the teacher, school counselor, parent, and student of the outcome.