North Carolina's pre-K programs got good grades. 

With its More at Four program, it was one of only two states — Alabama was the other — to meet all 10 quality standards for pre-kindergarten programs as set by the National Institute for Early Education Research, Lynn Bonner reports.

The institute, based at Rutgers University in New Jersey, looked at standards for teacher education, student-to-teacher ratios, and class sizes.

The report, which was written before the Senate budget was released Monday, included this observation:

We are concerned that unless funding per child increases in North Carolina, programs will be forced to undercut quality in some other ways (with unreasonably low teacher pay for their qualifications, for example).

The Senate has proposed cutting $40 million from the program and cut the amount it pays per student.

The state began offering More at Four in 2001. The pre-school program is open to children from low-income families or those who have other risk factors, such as educational or developmental delays.

North Carolina legislators' salaries are far below their counterparts.

A comparison of base salaries in the 23 state legislatures that the National Conference of State Legislatures considers comparable to North Carolina shows their pay is at the bottom.

State lawmakers here have a base salary of $13,951 per year. Only Nebraska ($12,000), South Carolina ($10,400) and Texas ($7,200) give less, while Alabama and Kentucky do not have an annual salary.

The median is $24,012, the amount Alaska pays. The highest is $48,708 in Hawaii.

The NCSL divides legislatures into three categories based on the time they spend on the job, their staff size and their pay.

North Carolina falls into the middle category, where legislators spend more than two-thirds of their time on political work and have a medium-sized staff, but do not make enough to be full-time politicians.

California's full-time legislators are the highest-paid, with $116,208 as a base salary. South Dakota legislators have the lowest pay, at $12,000 over a two-year term, although 11 other states pay only by the day or week.

John Shelton Reed says the Southeast is a concept, not a region.

The retired UNC-Chapel Hill sociology professor said that the Southeastern United States is a loosely defined "post-historical region" centered around Atlanta.

"It's an economy; it's not a culture," he said. "You talk about Southern music and Southern cooking and Southern women. You don't talk about Southeastern music and cooking and women."

As a general rule, Reed said the boundaries do not necessarily follow state borders, but he would use the Mississippi River as the dividing line between the Southeast and the Southwest and the usual borders between the North and South.

That would include: Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

It would leave out Arkansas and Louisiana. He said West Virginia would be a borderline case.

"These boundaries are kind of indistinct," he said. "You don't cross a border, you sort of move into it gradually."

Hat Tip: awbeal 

Who needs the federal government? We've got football.

Though the U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeastern region in its reports, another major — more important? — agency does: The Southeastern Conference.

The college athletic conference headquartered in Alabama has its own roster of states it considers to be in the Southeast:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee.

It does not include North Carolina or Virginia, which are part of the Atlantic Coast Conference but are undoubtedly in the Southeast. It also skips West Virginia, a borderline case.

The definition is important because a recent political ad compares tax rates in the Southeast, which obviously differ depending on which states you include.

How do you define the Southeast?

We here at Dome headquarters have been poring over some tax data this morning as part of a fact-check, and we came across this interesting epistemological problem.

The general consensus of our group of reporters was that it includes the following states:

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

We did not include West Virginia, but the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis does in its regional breakdowns. That means a number of other groups, such as the Tax Foundation, also use it.

The U.S. Census Bureau does not define the Southeast.