Academic Integrity
Integrity is an important component of any educational experience and in all areas of life. A component of personal integrity is academic integrity. It is the right, privilege, and responsibility of each individual to contribute to and work in a community of trust. A student’s integrity in his/her academic work is directly linked to his/her intellectual growth. A high level of academic integrity is expected from all AMHS students in his/her classwork, homework, and examinations.
Violations of academic integrity include cheating, plagiarism, and theft of academic materials.
“Cheating” means giving or receiving an unfair, dishonest, or deceitful advantage over others in school work. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- talking, using signs or gestures to communicate information or request information during an examination;
- copying an assignment from another student or allowing another student to copy your assignment;
- passing along examination information from one class period to members of another class period or to a student who was absent for the examination;
- looking onto another student’s examination for information or allowing a student to look your work;
- using notes in any form on a closed-book or closed-note examination;
- submitting pre-written work when such work is supposed to be written in class;
- exceeding time limits on timed examinations or assignments;
- using unauthorized study aids, notes, books, data , or other information (including electronically-formatted information)
- falsifying data (science labs, statistics, etc.);
- “working together” on an assignment when individual work is required;
- stealing copies of examinations; selling, copying, or letting others copy an examination.
“Plagiarism” means presenting as one’s own, the works, the opinions, the ideas, the arrangement of materials, or the thought pattern of someone else (including on the Internet) without proper acknowledgement. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- having a parent or another person write an essay or do a project which is then submitted as one’s own work;
- failing to use proper documentation and works cited (bibliography) or fabricating a bibliography;
- directly quoting a source without citation;
- summarizing or paraphrasing another’s ideas or work without proper citation;
- copying and pasting from the Internet without citation;
- using an unauthorized translator in Modern Language.
Any incident of academic dishonesty is considered a violation of the school code of conduct. Violations of academic integrity result in both academic and disciplinary consequences. There are two types of infractions: “violations” and “serious violations.”
Students who incur “violations” receive a disciplinary consequence of varying hours of detention or possible Disciplinary Monitoring with detention. Academic consequences involve receiving partial credit to “0” credit for the work (the amount of credit is agreed upon within an academic department). Examples of “violations” are:
- “working together” when individual work is required;
- falsifying data;
- copying another student’s homework assignment; providing your homework assignment to another student;
- signaling an answer during an examination or allowing another student to look onto your examination;
- looking at another student’s examination or asking/signaling for information during an examination;
- coming into examination with a small amount of written information/one formula;
- using an online translator in one or more places;
- several sentences not quoted or referenced in a paper.
Students who incur “serious violations” will be placed on Disciplinary Monitoring and receive multiple hours of detention or possible referral to the Student Review Board. As academic consequence, the student will receive “0” credit for the work. Examples of “serious violations” are the following:
- giving your test to another student who needs to do a make-up test; obtaining another student’s test in preparation to take a make-up test;
- coming into an examination with a cheat sheet or formulas on a calculator;
- using information from a stolen copy of an examination for personal benefit;
- stealing a copy of an examination for personal benefit and/or distribution;
- significant portions of a major paper or project lack citation;
- a major paper or project contains a fabricated bibliography;
- all or part of a major paper or project has been lifted off of the Intenet website or “paper mill.”
Repeated violations of academic integrity will result in more severe consequences. Serious violations or repeated violations are subject to referral to the Student Review Board.
