Taking special aim at Mr. Bush's claim to be an education reformer, the group said he had diverted money from public schools and tried to raid teacher retirement funds at a time when the state ranked 45th in the College Board test scores.

Long known for excellent universities like Duke and the Univerity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, its high school students ranked last nationally in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores in 1989.

During the Reagan Administration, the Labor Department began to allow states to rank individual scores within three groups - black, white and Hispanic - rather than comparing the scores against all applicants' test results.

For the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, Rockingham County High was a North Carolina Public Schools "School of Distinction" for being ranked 7th in the state for combined End of Course Test scores.

Mississippi was ranked 18th nationally in SAT scores.

Click on any header to rank scores in order.