ABSTRACT
Lincoln’s humor and brilliance shine in this riddle attributed to him (Lincoln, n.d.) and perhaps we smile as we read it because of the play on the nature of truth inherent in it. A tail is not a leg simply because someone says it, yet a school is labeled as ‘failing’ if a test score says it. Apparently, sometimes a tail is a leg, if a legislature says that the definition of ‘leg’ will, from this point hence, be so adjusted. Similarly, a school may be considered failing if the children do not perform on a test at a certain predetermined level if that’s the legislated definition of failure. When those in power mandate such truth, it seems to have a domino effect as the public believes it, states and districts act upon it as truth, and eventually children, teachers, and families appropriate a legislated truth as the truth. One of the goals of this research was to look at the tail-being-calleda-leg in education and interrogate it. The work begins with teachers asked to tell their truths and to interrogate the worthiness of those truths and then extends into classrooms asking fifth and sixth graders to do the same thing. In this chapter I explain how I met the teachers and was invited into their classrooms and introduce the ideas of the official portrait and counterportraits.
