Thinking More Politically about the Challenges before Us: A Response to Romberg

I have a good deal of respect for Thomas Romberg. Over the past three decades, he has had a significant impact on how we think about educational research, policy, and practice. This is true not only in mathematics education but in the larger research community as well. His response to my analysis rightly reminds us of many of the educational and social goals and beliefs that stood behind the history of the Standards documents. These are valuable reminders, because all too often we forget the historical genesis of important arguments. We pull them out of the issues that generated them. thereby losing some of the power and insights they may possess. Yet this very sense of history points to a number of pressing concerns. I shall raise them in the context of what my friends in logic call the genetic fallacy.