A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and UC-Berkeley concluded that girls perform just as well as boys on standardized math tests.
But the tired math and gender question is not the most interesting part of the study. This is:
To their dismay, the researchers found that the tests in the 10 states [California, Connecticut, Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, West Virginia, and Wyoming] did not include a single question requiring complex problem-solving, forcing them to use a national assessment test for that portion of their research.
Got that? State tests were so easy that researchers had to use the National Assessment of Educational Progress math test to find challenging math questions.
Such is the state of state standards in those ten states, as well as in North Carolina.