Academic Honesty & Integrity
Honest behavior is an expectation of all students in the Irvine Unified School District. Within the Irvine Unified School District, there is a shared responsibility to ensure that grades reflect the knowledge and skill level of each student. Acts of academic dishonesty can inhibit learning and adversely impact the accuracy of grades. When academic honesty violations occur, consequences shall be determined through an evaluation of the specific situation, shall be commensurate with the seriousness of the act, and shall take into consideration the previous record of the student. When appropriate, consequences for academic dishonesty shall be imposed both at the school and the classroom level commensurate with the grade level and developmental needs of the student. All academic honesty violations shall be documented in the student’s discipline file for future reference.
Specific types of academic honesty violations are listed here: Cheating on Assessments, Fabrication, Unauthorized Collaboration, Plagiarism, Alternation of Materials, Theft, Transfer of Use of Unauthorized Materials, and Digital Citizenship Violations. These examples do not represent a complete list of possible violations.
The academic honesty disciplinary process utilizes defined categories to outline different levels of academic honesty violations or progressive consequences due to repeated violations.
Category A includes but is not limited to:
- Copying any minor assignment from any other source or a portion thereof, such as a one-night homework assignment (not including tests or quizzes) assigned to be done independently
- Collaborating on a minor assignment in a manner inconsistent with the explicit and implicit expectations of the assignment for individual work
- Sharing work on a minor assignment with another student with the reasonable expectation and intention that the other student(s) might plagiarize that work
Category B includes but is not limited to:
- Any violation on a major assignment (such as tests, quizzes, labs, projects, essays, assignments requiring multiple days to complete, etc.) that is consistent with the descriptions set forth in the Category A violations above
- Submitting plagiarized work, (other than on a minor assignment as defined in Category A)
- Sharing work inconsistent with class/course expectations and instructions
- Looking at another student’s work or paper during an exam, test, or quiz
- Talking to or communicating with another student during an exam, test, or quiz
- Using any unauthorized material or device during an exam, test, or quiz (including translators, calculators, cell phone, etc.)
- Giving or receiving test information, in any form, to or from students in other periods of the same teacher or the same course or from previous school years
- Repetitive deception about completion or submission of work
- Altering a returned quiz, test, or assignment with the purpose of deceiving the teacher about the student’s performance on that assignment
- Accessing exam content, projects, or assignments without expressed consent from instructor
- Multiple Category A violations
Category C includes but is not limited to:
- Distributing exams, projects, or assignments
- Stealing (may include photographing) exams, projects or assignments
- Altering grades on a computer database or in a grade book
- Multiple Category B violations
To view the policy in its entirety please go to: https://iusd.org/about/board-education/board-policies/academic-honesty-and-integrity/academic-honesty-and-integrity