Below is my experience and the only reason I write it is to help others understand what they MIGHT expect. I do not get paid in any form in relationship to dyslexia.
We have tutored our child starting KG with several personal tutors (1-year each) and in a Sylvan Center (I reviewed it too). Our child also went to Reading Intervention specialist at public school. He read out loud to us every night for several years. In addition we read to him endlessly starting at infancy to the age of 9 (to give you an idea - I personally read 5 books of Percy Jackson when he was in 3rd grade), however it was not sustainable, he was falling behind in development, public school taught nothing, we were desperate. In the middle of 3rd grade (age 9.5 - years old) we felt something must change. We stopped private tutoring, enrolled into a new school for the 4th grade and in March of 3rd grade my spouse started tutoring. While public school had no homework, we did tutoring March - August 3 times/week. The new school has daily HW, so we now tutor San and Sun only, not ideal.
Our son has almost classic dyslexia - reading is a problem and it spills out into other parts of life; nothing is easy and fast. We're less than a year into Barton and finishing level 6. Considering the cost and time investment, it is 5+ stars. Susan's instructions are very detailed. It is much better that the non-dyslexic parent does the tutoring if you don't go to professional, however I feel that while not ideal, even dyslexic parent could do it. It is a Material Sacrifices on your part, but it is very realistic to do for everyone, even for working parents (both of us have careers and another child).
Today (end of Jan, ~ 10-11 months into Barton) our child read to me a chapter from "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", which is a book they read in his literature class right now. If you check Lexile, GRL, DRA, it's approx 5th grade book, but clearly advanced 2-3rd grader can read it. Our son is in 4th grade and attends private school. The reading was not fast and not similar to Audible, however it was not painful to listen to with very few errors. Unfortunately, our child still doesn't enjoy reading and his spelling is poor (that is consider that his school teaches very advanced vocabulary), however I feel that Barton contributed to our child being able to read long words. He knows how to break the words down and the rules to read them. Daily practice is helpful for short words to remember.
I feel that reading for children is an extremely critical skill. If the child can't read, the development is not happening as it should. Since there is not enough time to do everything we want to do, we also use Learning Ally (Susan Barton helped us with) and kindle (with Text-to-Speech) feature. Our son wouldn't read Harry Porter on his own; it is too hard, but he can listen to it, which might not be the best thing, but much better than what most other 10-year olds do in their spare time.
We made many mistakes with our child. If I had to do it again, I would have started Barton in KG or 1st grade the latest. I also regret not looking into Armstrong (or other) schools. We were very set on going the public route, which was a significant error. Public schools know nothing about dyslexia. I also didn't suspect that I might have learning disability, so we never suspected our child would.
We're also currently investigating the issue with vision. I think our son gets tired much faster than he should and tests seems to confirm it. read more