Florida homeowners' brief respite from insurance rates will end soon.

Florida Farm Bureau, one of the state's most conservative insurers,
is requesting a 30.3 percent hike starting Oct. 1. That's after cutting
rates 24.5 percent in June to reflect what regulators said would be the
savings by buying cheap reinsurance from the state. Those reductions are
averaging 12 percent statewide, half of what lawmakers were told to expect.

Now it is time for Farm Bureau -- and all other regulated home
insurers in Florida -- to begin submitting their so-called "true-up"
filings. Due Sept. 1, they allow insurers to reflect the actual savings
gained from the state backup.

The Office of Insurance Regulation has set a July 10 public hearing
on Farm Bureau's request.

Florida education officials still can't decipher what went wrong with
the 2006 FCAT.

Reading scores for third-graders that year jumped 8 percentage points
-- good news until the 2007 scores came in showing a 6-point drop. The
State Board of Education last week decided the inflated 2006 reading
scores won't be used in calculating grades for whole schools.

But Education Commissioner Jeanine Blomberg is still on the hunt to
find out what went wrong. "No adequate solutions have been identified,"
the department states in a recent purchasing document.

Blomberg's detective is the state's former testing director.

The education department has announced a $150,000 contract to
Tennessee education consultant Thomas Fisher, Florida's former director
of school testing. His job is to advise Blomberg on the FCAT review
still going on, and as the testing program rolls forward.