Academics Home

Independence High School (IHS) provides a rigorous, student-centered academic program designed to support continuous growth and timely progress toward graduation. Students meet weekly, in person, with their supervising teacher to review coursework, assess understanding, and set individualized learning goals. Core academic instruction is delivered through Edmentum, MUHSD’s online learning platform, with additional support from IXL diagnostics and personalized learning plans in English and mathematics to target specific skill gaps and accelerate achievement.

To foster engagement, collaboration, and deeper learning, IHS offers monthly Student Seminars featuring small-group, hands-on enrichment activities. In addition, IHS offers a Lion’s Café, a weekly two-hour, in-person space dedicated to tutoring, academic intervention, creativity, and peer connection. These structured supports ensure students receive consistent guidance while benefiting from a flexible, independent study model.

Guided by the vision, “Learning with PRIDE. Growing with Purpose,” IHS empowers students to reach their full potential, develop workforce-ready skills, and make meaningful contributions to their communities. IHS has 21 Career Technical Education offerings across sectors, including Agriculture and Natural Resources, Education, Energy and Power, Media Arts and Digital Media, and Patient Care. This expansion allows students to explore new career pathways or continue existing CTE sequences within their independent learning contracts, blending hands-on learning with academic rigor and preparing students for college, careers, and life beyond high school.

Academic Policies:

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is the cornerstone of Online learning.

What is academic integrity?

As members of an academic community, students and faculty have the responsibility to foster and maintain Academic Honesty. Academic dishonesty is a serious violation of the trust upon which an academic community depends. Academic integrity means that all work you submit is created by you and is an original representation of your work. It means that what you submit as your work is your work.

Why is academic integrity important?

When you submit an assignment that is not your own original work, you represent something incorrectly. There are two issues involved:

1.) You are earning credit for learning material for which you have not demonstrated mastery.

2.) You may be violating the law.

What are some examples of academic integrity violations?

There are two kinds of academic integrity violations. One is “plagiarism” and the other is “cheating.”

Plagiarism/Copying- The definition of plagiarize is “to steal or pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own without crediting the source” (Webster’s 877). In addition, any unauthorized collaboration, working with or receiving help from others on graded assignments without the specific approval of the instructor, is considered cheating. More specifically, copying from another student’s assignment or letting someone copy your assignment (whether it is word-for-word or partially copied) is a violation of MUHSD and California Ed Code 48900.
 

Some examples are, but not limited to the following:

• Copying and pasting a report from the Internet and representing it as your own work
• Copying any other work and not properly citing authorship

Cheating

Two definitions are particularly relevant in online learning:

To influence or lead by deceit, fraud or trickery, to violate rules dishonestly.

Some examples are, but not limited to the following:

Providing questions/answers/ works to another student, receiving questions/answers/work from another student.

What will happen to me if I plagiarize or cheat?

A variety of consequences may be administered when you are caught cheating or plagiarizing. These consequences range from resubmission of an assignment up to the loss of opportunity to participate in online coursework through MUHSD.