Perhaps no other words occur more frequently than standards in today's discourse on educational reform. There is much debate about standards. Instead of taking sides on the debate, this paper argues that the problem with standards does not lie so much in standards themselves as in how they are viewed by those who make them and those who are held accountable by them. Specifically, what we believe about standards has a tremendous impact on the role standards play in our practices. This paper examines standards critically from the perspectives of positivism, panopticism, and intersubjectivism. Depending on the perspective taken, standards are shown to be interpreted quite differently.