2. Michael Apple, "Do the Standards Go Far Enough? Power, Policy, and Practice in Mathematics Education," Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 23, no. 5 (1992): 412-31, at 413.

3. Sykes and Plastrik, Standard Setting, 4. They actually put the "autonomy of individuals" on one end, not democracy.

4. See Pearson, "Standards for the English Language Arts"; Romberg, "Rallying Flag"; and Sykes and Plastrik, Standard Setting.

5. Deborah Loewenberg Ball, in conversation, April 1998. See also Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Implementing the NCTM Standards: Hope and Hurdles, Issue Paper 92-2 (East Lansing: National Center for Research on Teacher Learning, 1992), 15.

6. Ravitch, National Standards, 9; see also Sykes and Plastrik, Standard Setting, 3.

7. Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996). This book will be cited as BFN in the text for all subsequent references.

8. See Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, vol. 1, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984); and, for a summary, Jürgen Habermas, "Remarks on the Concept of Communicative Action," in Social Action, ed. Gottfried Seebass and Raimo Tuomela (Boston: D. Reidel, 1985): 151-77. For Habermas, communicative action refers, in general, to interaction oriented toward reaching mutual understanding. At least implicit in every communicative act is a criticizable validity claim - a guarantee to provide reasons for the truth, rightfulness, or sincerity (truthfulness) of the utterance if it is called into question. He uses the terms "argumentation" to refer to a "reflective" type communicative action in which participants explicitly thematize contested validity claims and attempt to vindicate or criticize them. Thus, what we discuss here under the label communicative action actually refers to the reflective aspect of what communicative action encompasses for Habermas.

9. Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, trans. Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), 88-90.

10. Habermas, "Remarks," 176; See also Jürgen Habermas, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 315.

11. Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 185-210.

12. See for example, NCTM, Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (Reston, Va.: NCTM); NCTE/IRA, Standards for the English Language Arts (Urbana: NCTE/IRA); AGS, AAG, NCGE, and NGS, Geography for Life: National Geography Standards (Washington: National Geographic, 1994).

13. See Linda Darling-Hammond, The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997), 221, 224, and 304.

14. See Habermas, Lifeworld and System.

15. Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking, trans. William Mark Hohengarten (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), 140.

16. Pamela A. Moss, Aaron Schutz, and Kathleen M. Collins, in "An Integrative Approach to Portfolio Evaluation for Teacher Licensure," Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education 12, no. 2 (1998): 139-62, explore this challenge with respect to an assessment project that draws extensively from Darling-Hammond's model.

17. Sally Lubeck, "Is Developmentally Appropriate Practice for Everyone?" Childhood Education 74, no. 5 (1998): 283-92.

18. Ann Lieberman and Maureen Grolnick, "Networks and Reform in American Education," Teachers College Record 98, no. 1 (1996): 25.

19. Lieberman and Grolnick, "Networks and Reform," 10; see also Sykes and Plastrik, Standard Setting, 33.

20. Ann Lieberman and Milbrey W. McLaughlin, "Networks for Educational Change: Powerful and Problematic," Phi Delta Kappan 73 (1992): 673-77 at 675.

21. Ibid., 676.

22. Ibid.

23. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958), 57. This book will be cited as HC in the text for all subsequent references.

24. Lieberman and Grolnick, "Networks and Reform," 37.

25. See Sykes and Plastrik, Standard Setting, 46.

26. See for example, Lisa Delpit, "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People's Children," Harvard Educational Review 58, no. 3 (1988): 280-98.

27. See Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); and Susan Bickford, The Dissonance of Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996). One could argue, drawing from Patricia Hill Collins, "The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought," Signs 14, no. 4, (1989): 745-73, that having a diverse group of individuals agree on an outcome for a candidate for different reasons (from different perspectives) is actually a stronger and more "objective" outcome than attempting to evaluate such a problematic portfolio from the point of view of some imagined community "consensus."