Northridge High School Honor Code

As members of the Northridge High School community, we honor academic and personal integrity. We uphold the values of honesty, integrity, respect, and responsibility. 

Honesty is a value that holds each person to the truth, to tell the truth, and to defend the truth. Honesty results in fairness for each member of the NHS community. Integrity is firm adherence to our values with and without the presence of others. Respect is treating others as we would like to be treated. In an environment of respect, work we turn in as our own is our own. Responsibility is the quality of being accountable for our actions and accepting the consequences of our actions.

The Honor Code is a physical representation of the values that Northridge High School should encompass. The intent of this Honor Code is to promote responsible behavior that creates an orderly and safe school environment. The behavior students acquire through their actions is the most valuable gift they can carry with them after graduation, and it is the most valuable gift any educational institution can give. The Honor Code is not meant as an imposition, but rather as a standard to which all students and faculty should be held. At NHS, we push each other to higher academic achievement; this code asks that we hold each other, with the same rigor and passion in academics, to a standard of integrity and of personal achievement

Principles Regarding Academic Integrity

Students are responsible for acting with honesty and integrity, and for following District 6’s Student Code of Conduct.  To ensure clarity for all concerned, NHS further defines academic dishonesty to include, but is not limited to the following:

Cheating includes, but is not limited to:

• Use of any unauthorized assistance or collaboration in taking quizzes or examinations, completing homework, papers, projects or labs.
• Dependence on the use of sources beyond those authorized by the individual classroom teacher in writing reports, papers, solving problems, or carrying out other assignments.
• Acquisition without permission of tests or other academic material belonging to a member of the staff.
• Unauthorized use of computer translators, programmable calculators, personal digital assistants, cell phones, or other electronic devices.
• Unauthorized possession of examinations, answer keys, library materials, computer software, computer codes, or laboratory materials.
• Sharing of information regarding examinations or quiz content with students in other sections of the class.
• Unauthorized changing of grades on an examination, quiz, homework assignment, project, or in an instructor’s grade book or grade report, or unauthorized access to academic computer records.
• Intentional beneficial grading of assignments by one student for another.
• Selling or purchasing examinations, papers, computer programs and/or assignments of any kind.

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:

• The use, by summary, paraphrase or direct quotation, of the published or unpublished work of another person without full and clear acknowledgement.  It also includes submitting exams, themes, reports, drawings, laboratory notes, undocumented quotations, computer-processed materials, or other material as one’s own work when such work has been prepared by another person or copied from another person or from a website.
• The unacknowledged use of materials prepared by another person or agency engaged in the selling of term papers or other academic materials, including electronic media.

In many cases collaboration is to be encouraged, depending on the nature of the assignment. Inappropriate collaboration is working with others in ways contrary to the teacher’s instructions. If your teacher has instructed you not to collaborate and you do so, it is cheating. Unless otherwise instructed by your teacher, the tasks you complete are to be a product of your own thinking, creativity, and work