Enough schools may have started earlier this year, and, as a result, the increase in employment came in August and not in September.

We began an aggressive reading strategy through Reading First two years ago in nearly 100 elementary schools with low reading achievement across the state. These efforts, which involve students in the early grades, will show up on NAEP measures in future years, and will give us a roadmap for expanding this approach to providing professional development, building leadership and strengthening reading instruction in more schools in our state.

Based on talking to other schools, it typically takes two to three years to get the numbers up.

It's a rude interruption of that string of nine straight monthly job gains.

It's pretty good job growth. Revised numbers show job growth was stronger than we thought in the second half of last year.

What's happening is not so much that more people are leaving but that fewer people are coming. Our housing prices are pretty daunting, even more so than two years ago.