In 2003, New Zealand significantly reorganised high school education by moving to a standards-based assessment approach. This paper investigates whether the economics standards are associated with economic understanding using 2008-2011 data from students at the University of Waikato. We find that there is significant association between NCEA economics and economic literacy. However, some standards have a much closer association with economic literacy, in particular AS90631 and AS90632. These standards are the only standards associated with economic literacy for both high aptitude and low aptitude students. An optimal high school course in economics should include these standards as a minimum.