The Back-to-School displays are up, but that doesn't mean students are stocking up on pencils and folders.

Target and other retailers today are reporting slow sales for the month of July. Target's sales totaled $4.4 billion. Excluding stores that have been open less than a year, sales were down 6.5 percent, compared with last July, the company said.

CEO Gregg Steinhafel said the decline was within the company's range of expectation. "While our sales remain challenging, we continue to experience favorable gross margin performance within categories and disciplined expense control in our retail segment, as well as modestly improving risk trends in our credit card segment."

Now, the retailer will need to wait and hope kids come this month to fill up their backpacks before the start of school.