Rationale                                                                                                                                                 
We at Springfield Township High School understand and value the concept of intellectual property.  Therefore, we strive to teach students the ethic of responsibly documenting the ideas of others in all formats. To do so, we believe that we must not only teach the ethics and mechanics of documentation, but we must also hold students accountable for the ethical use of the ideas and words of others.  

Plagiarism, in any form, is unacceptable.

• Intentional plagiarism is an unethical choice; the student knowingly submits someone else's words or ideas as if they were his/her own.
• Indicators of unintentional plagiarism are lack of or imprecision in documentation and/or inattention to format issues.

• an assignment sheet with explicit requirements and directions
• a specific rubric for assessment of the process and the product
• checkpoints to facilitate the research process, to assist students in time management, and to provide opportunities to help students during the process
• extra help availability for students who are having difficulty with note-taking, documenting, or formatting procedures
• clear guidelines for acceptable help from human sources (peers, adults)

It is the student’s responsibility to:

• meet checkpoint deadlines
• ask questions and to seek help from teachers and librarian
• follow the School District of Springfield Twp. Research Guide guidelines and MLA or APA format per teacher direction (available online at SHS Virtual Library)
• submit an Acknowledgments page to credit help given by others (help that has been approved by teacher giving the assignment)
• use in-text  or in-project documentation accurately and appropriately
• use Works Cited and Works Consulted pages accurately and appropriately
• submit only his/her own work

Examples of plagiarism signals:

• Direct copying of the work of another submitted as the student’s own (from that of another student or other person, from an Internet source, from a print source). Indicators are unusual sophistication in diction or sentence structures, or teacher recognizes source.
•  Lack of in-text or in-project documentation
• Incomplete in-text or in project documentation
  
•  Documentation that does not check out or does not match Works Cited/Works Consulted.
• Work that suddenly appears on final due date without a clear provenance  (lacks evidence of process and/or did not meet checkpoint dates) 

Consequences and Opportunity for Learning

1.  The Academic Standards Committee (includes principal, librarian, Language Arts department coordinator, referring teacher's department coordinator and teacher involved in referring issue) will confer to confirm the teacher’s suspicion of plagiarism and to determine which, if any, options to give to the student for learning from his/her error in judgment.  Upon confirmation of plagiarism, the student earns a zero for the plagiarism and the teacher files a disciplinary referral. Options include but are not limited to:

• No second opportunity (e.g., a senior who is not new to the high school or any student who has blatantly copied a paper from another source, i.e., Internet source or another student)
• Redoing the project (e.g. a senior who is new to the high school)
• Redoing the project from an earlier, satisfactorily met checkpoint (e.g. an underclassman who, as determined by the committee, will benefit from the opportunity to complete the process correctly)
• Adding the appropriate documentation that is missing (e.g. an underclassman who has used a variety of sources and will benefit from the opportunity to add the necessary documentation)

2.  The committee will meet with the student to share its findings.  At this time, the student will have the opportunity to talk with the committee about the issues. Following this meeting, a member of the committee will write a letter to the student and parents to explain the decision, its ramifications, and, if appropriate, the second opportunity. Although parents may contact the committee to have questions answered, the decision, at this time, is final.

3. The student may choose not to take advantage of the second opportunity. If so, the zero stands.

4.  A student may have only one “second opportunity” offer in his/her high school career. A second offense automatically earns a zero without redress.

5.  The teacher will assess the “second opportunity” work.  If satisfactory, the lowest passing grade will replace the zero. If the work is unsatisfactory, the zero stands.

6.  It is possible that a student will fail a course if s/he plagiarizes a project of sufficient weight.  In this case, the student repeats the course or attends summer school. The student’s summer school experience must include satisfactory completion of a similar research-based project in order to earn course credit; otherwise, the student must repeat the course.