“This is insane. I’m surprised that no one has mentioned taking legal action against the school over this (although I haven’t read the entire thread).”
It’s been mentioned many times. As has criticism for wanting to resort to lawyers. Reading the thread does help. 
My older two attended a school that had a practice like this. It didn’t affect my children but one of my eldest’s good friends was brought before the school’s honor/disciplinary board for academic misconduct, specifically plagiarism, for using the wrong citation form.
If it had been my child, i would have gone apes**t. Dock her a grade, make her take a test on citations, lecture her on how serious it is to misquote, sure, those are all are reasonable reactions. But plagiarism? A mark of academic dishonesty on a HS transcript? As someone else said upthread, that should be reserved for instances where the student is trying to pass off someone else’s information as their own. Making a mistake in citation form or, in our present case, citing a secondary source as a primary source sounds like something that merits correction and editing, not a red mark on a transcript.
I don’t remember how the parents and kid dealt with it except that ultimately hey did pull her out of the school. She did fine when it came time for college admissions. If it were my kid, I’d meet with the administrators along with her and question them further. No way would I accept this.
Several people have.
I’m not going to weigh in (too much) because I (and the rest of the users here) do not have all the facts, other than I feel for the OP and daughter and hope they can resolve. However, I do find this thread interesting in light of the thread here on parents going wild at Sidwell Friends:
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2146113-parents-gone-wild.html#latest
It sounds like this school could use a few more wild parents. I’ll further say from the OP’s descriptions, I can bet any amount of money that I know what school this is, and it’s one I long ago crossed off the list for my kids (yeah, I plan ahead. 
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OP, I’m so sorry for what your DD and you are going through.
The thing that keeps sticking in my mind is that your DD is at a school that puts her in the position of getting only 3 (or perhaps just very little, if “only 3” was hyperbole) hours of sleep per night. That’s just not healthy for your child. I read some of your other threads and know your DS had a great experience at BS and you have at least one who got in ED to Wharton. So obviously this is not your first rodeo, and you said your kids were legacies at Penn and Cornell, which means that you and your spouse are not new to the elite school scene.
I would think long and hard about finding a place for your DD where she can have more balance in her life. I say this as an alum of a HYP with one kid at a HYP and one heading off to a top 30 school. Some kiddos thrive on the pressure of being on the highwire and performing at that level in all classes for all 4 years of HS - they need to be with academic peers who also get a 1600 on the first sitting of the SAT because that’s where they are intellectually and they thrive on the high level/cross-pollination of intellectual abilities (and they do so while pursuing intensive ECs and getting enough sleep every night). Others can’t achieve at that level without significant stress challenges and don’t need that sort of experience. There’s no shame in it that at all. What I wanted for my kids is what you surely want too - healthy, happy kids, and your challenge here is figuring out the best way to make that happen, whether that’s staying put and emphasizing mental health and “the big picture” or seeking a different school for your DD.
Wishing you all the best of luck and do keep us posted.
Regardless of how the school defines it, plagiarism is deliberate academic theft; that’s what the accusation is. OP needs to sit with principal and teacher and see the evidence of the accused crime. As the guardian of a minor, that is her right and her responsibility.
I share this not to nitpick but so that posters see how colleges define plagiarism as encompassing both intentional and unintentional instances. Not knowing this could result in issues at the college level. It is an important issue with unpleasant consequences as seen here.
A few examples:
https://plagiarism.duke.edu/def/
Duke Definition of Plagiarism
As stated in The Duke Community Standard in Practice: A Guide for Undergraduates:
““Plagiarism” occurs when a student, with intent to deceive or with disregard for proper scholarly procedures, presents any information, ideas or phrasing of another as if they were his/her own and/or does not give appropriate credit to the original source. Proper scholarly procedures require that all quoted material be identified by quotation marks or indentation on the page, and the source of information and ideas, if from another, must be identified and be attributed to that source. Students are responsible for learning proper scholarly procedures.1
This suggests that there are two kinds of plagiarism: one that is committed with the intent to deceive (intentional plagiarism) and one resulting from the disregard for proper scholarly procedures (unintentional plagiarism).”
“There are different types of plagiarism and all are serious violations of academic honesty. We have defined the most common types below and have provided links to examples.”
It lists several types including this:
“Accidental Plagiarism
Accidental plagiarism occurs when a person neglects to cite their sources, or misquotes their sources, or unintentionally paraphrases a source by using similar words, groups of words, and/or sentence structure without attribution. (See example for mosaic plagiarism.) Students must learn how to cite their sources and to take careful and accurate notes when doing research. (See the Note-Taking section on the Avoiding Plagiarism page.) Lack of intent does not absolve the student of responsibility for plagiarism. Cases of accidental plagiarism are taken as seriously as any other plagiarism and are subject to the same range of consequences as other types of plagiarism.”
But this is HS, not college, where they should be teaching citation. The OP stated her daughter made an error between citing primary and secondary sources.
IMO, HS is the time where that type of error should be reflected in the grade and is a teachable moment, not something that goes on a student’s disciplinary record.
There was mention upthread how this could potentially hurt OP’s D at a service academy. A relative of mine had been a Liaison Officer to one of the academies and had told me the story of a candidate who had committed a crime when he was younger. The academy did accept him, because that transgression was an epiphany moment in that boy’s life, and he completely turned his life around and had 3 years of this changed life under his belt to show that this was a sustained change.
I assume OP’s D doesn’t want to go to a service academy, but if she did, I could see an essay that talks about how many details in life are viewed as not important, and short shrift is given to them, but as a result of this experience she has come to realize just how very important details are and how you have to give your attention to all of it. Written the right way, I could see this as not being a ding. Bottom line, I don’t think any college is off the table. This is recoverable.
OP, she is so close to being done. Senior fall is just about applications, and by spring the seniors have checked out emotionally and already look to the future. Her high school experience is in the past; apply early to a good fit and she can focus on college instead. I don’t think anyone should prolong high school, it is hard enough the first time thru.
I hate to sound naieve (long time since I did a formal research paper) but is there a difference in the way one cites primary and secondary materials? I thought they all got a footnote or parenthetical citation in the text with the source
included in the bibliography.
Primary sources should always be used unless you cannot find the primary source, than it is okay to cite a secondary source but the procedure for the citation is somewhat altered.
It’s been a long time for me as well so someone can correct me if I am wrong. Maybe as the recent college grad, @skieurope could clarify.
Well, I was a STEM major, so my experience is a bit limited compared toa humanities major, but @doschicos is more or less correct. Secondary sources should be used sparingly. They can be used, as mentioned, when the primary source is unavailable. Another example is if the primary source is not in English (or whatever language the paper is being written in). And yes, there is a difference in how one cites primary vs. secondary.
Although, to be fair, the standards for citations for my honors thesis should be higher than for a HS research paper where, presumably, the student might have more limited access to primary sources.
“Although, to be fair, the standards for citations for my honors thesis should be higher than for a HS research paper where, presumably, the student might have more limited access to primary sources.”
Although I bet you were taught to use primary sources at your BS and how to handle citations, as my own children experienced.
Yes, but my point was that not all potential primary sources that I used for HS papers could be found at the school library or on the internet or (time permitting) interlibrary loan. And my HS (unlike my college) had no expectation that we search for primary sources when not available via those routes. Whether other high schools have different expectations is beyond my ken.
@doschicos Apparently her primary source was an e-book, which had only chapters not page numbers listed, so she chose the secondary source, poor choice. Her teacher also only wants end notes, not footnotes which also confused her. She did make a mistake and she did not take detailed enough notes during the research period. She is sixteen, not terribly organized but nobody has more integrity, this is soul crushing.
So your job is to show her resilience and how to piece her soul back together. Everyone makes mistakes, this will not define her, there are many happy college outcomes and successes possible. Just get thru each day one at a time. In 5 years, it won’t seem that important.
I think this is insane. What the OP’s daughter did doesn’t even fit the definition of “accidental” plagiarism that @doschicos cited. The kid - 16! - cited a secondary source versus a primary source. That’s nothing close to the root of plagiarism: trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own. It may have been sloppy, but it wasn’t dishonest.
OP, does the student handbook or any other document at the school define plagiarism? I really think she’s being wronged here and I would not stand for it.
It is also a good reminder to parents considering colleges that there is great disparity in how these matters are judged at different schools, and if it is important to you, it would be worthwhile investigating how any potential college under consideration treats these issues. Parents on these boards have mentioned casually actions that could easily result in expulsion at UVA, for example. Be informed.
What I find astonishing is that there is a private school that sends half its students to ivy+ . Astonishing. In absence of national standards - and all that holistic “sermons”, I find it astonishing that one private school can boast 50% rates while college board is implementing “Adversity Scores” attached to students scores based on zip codes. If this is not a definition of non-level field, then I don’t know what is.
I guess student in this case reported an actual paper when he/she skimmed off wikipedia. I have not seen any student spend 3 hours on sleep, and I say it as parent of someone who won many prestigious national level awards.
Have you thought of sending her to public school? I just don’t see the point of putting her through this.