go back to old teaching methods.
When my kids were young, they started using the “whole word” method to try to teach kids how to read, instead of phonics.
My kids all knew how to read before they were in first grade, because I taught them how to read with phonics like when I was a kid, so what happened at school didn’t impact us, but the “whole word” method did impact a number of families.
Basically, the method suggests that kids learn their first 100 words by sight, but then they have to guess the new words when it’s not a familiar one. They don’t know how to use phonics to sound out a word. It’s a terrible method.
For English, phonics works great. If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.
It would also be nice to have students who are interesting in learning and parents who insisted they do so.