Ethics Policy

 

To create a fair and positive learning environment, the Mira Costa Administration and Faculty require that students act with honesty at all times in their academic endeavors. To this end, academic integrity is promoted and consequences have been established in cases of unethical behavior. The development of academic integrity in the students of Mira Costa High School is a significant priority for teachers and staff. We encourage students and parents to become partners in this goal as students explore ideas and achieve success as a result of their own efforts. The Manhattan Beach Unified School District expects students to take their responsibilities as ethical learners seriously.

 

Cheating includes, but is not limited to, plagiarizing, copying another student’s work, using notes, electronics, or other means of assistance on an assignment or test, passing answers or information to other students about an assignment or test, altering a teacher’s grade book/records, taking a copy of a test to use it for personal advantage or for distribution to other students and/or using AI tools such as ChatGPT. Please note that teachers utilize software (such as turnitin.com), internet search engines, and references to other materials (including Spark Notes) to ascertain the authenticity of student work.

 

At the beginning of the school year, students will learn about and sign the Mira Costa honor code pledge. If a student breaks their commitment, the following steps will occur. If the teacher determines that a student has cheated or plagiarized, a teacher-student conference takes place to discuss the circumstances of the violation. The teacher then fills out a referral form to the Vice Principal detailing the offense. The Vice Principal meets with the student, contacts the parent, and implements discipline utilizing the discipline/behavior intervention matrix.

 

The MLA Handbook defines plagiarism as the use of another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without giving proper credit to the source. The word comes from the Latin word plagiarius ("kidnapper"), and Alexander Lindey defines it as "the false assumption of authorship: the wrongful act of taking the product of another person's mind, and presenting it as one's own" (Plagiarism and Originality [New York: Harper, 1952] 2).

"In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else" (Gibaldi 21- 25). This can include paraphrasing, copying someone else's writing word for word, or using ideas that aren't your own without proper citation.

Gibaldi, Joseph and Walter S. Achtert, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (3rd ed. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1988), pp. 21-25. <http://hnn.us/articles/514.html>

 

It is not possible to enumerate every type of plagiarism; we expect students to diligently avoid taking credit for another person’s work. To that end, we provide some examples of plagiarism below. This list is not exhaustive and constitutes a guideline for students. We expect parents to support our efforts to encourage students to generate and express original ideas.

 

Discipline Matrix link -Page 37-43