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Hi Geofizz! Long time no see...

Not sure it will be much help but happy to share what's going on with DD12 in case there is something of use for you.

DD spent 4 years at a spec Ed school and had a truly wonderful reading interventionist. She used Wilson consistently and by the end of 5th grade DD was at (or ever so slightly above) grade level. At that point teacher started introducing some parts of Lindamood Bell. I'm not sure just what parts but could go through notes and emails to see if there is any more specific info if you need it. By the end of 6th grade DD scored a 97 on the level Z Fontas and Pinnell. She was technically 1 point away from being released from dyslexia intervention. Reading teacher said the 1 point came from putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable a couple of times while reading a passage aloud but DD self corrected so she wasn't concerned. Everyone on the IEP team (including me) was shocked by this amazing performance.

That being said she still can't spell. At all. I mean even simple 3 letter words. She is now less likely to omit vowels than she was a couple years ago but they aren't necessarily the correct vowels. She still confuses certain letter sounds. While she can tell you the rules she can't really apply them while writing. (ie Just this morning she asked me how to spell "raw". If asked she could tell you how the "aw" sound should be spelled but that doesn't seem to enter into her process when writing the word herself.) Very few problems with decoding but encoding remains a significant challenge. Last year as part of her TAG program she had to create a "Jeopardy" game and lost points because on her title page she said Her Topic ADDITION instead of Her Topic EDITION. To her they sound alike and she had no idea she used the wrong word...

She is dysgraphic as well as dyslelexic so even more problems when writing by hand. She now chooses to write short passages by hand but they continue to be significantly shorter and way more simplified than what she types or does using voice-to-text.

She is no longer at spec Ed school so no longer working with awesome reading teacher so I don't anticipate much improvement in spelling. I have been told her spelling will likely improve now that she is reading text rather than relying solely on audio books. Frankly I don't really believe it will improve too much. From my perspective she made more progress by the end of 6th grade than I ever expected her to make by the end of high school so any further improvement will be gravy.

Taking notes, writing worksheets or doing any kind of standardized testing remains an elusive goal. I admire your son for being in a position to be looking at AP exams. I'm not convinced we will ever get there - certainly not without significant accommodations being in place. In these situations I wonder what would the college board do to accommodate a child who was let's say a quadriplegic? Early in his career DH had a student who wrote beautifully but had no use of his limbs. He was in college - and doing quite well - so there had to have been accommodations in place for his testing. Sadly that young man passed away long before DD came into the picture so we can't ask him but it shows that any sort of physical limitation has to have been accommodated - right? I think of that as my starting point.

We are just starting to look toward high school here - trying to determine what she will need to be able to do so we can work backward. I wonder if that might translate to contacting the college board now so you have time to get things in place for him before he takes that first AP class.

Anyway that's my input whatever it may be worth. Kudos to you, your son and his whole team for all the hard work and progress!

ETA And yes DD also has the articulation issues. Diagnosed with dysarthria her intelligibility has been rated at 91% after years of speech and oral motor work. She can hear errors when others speak (and can actually be pretty persnickety about it ...) but can't hear or feel the difference in her own speech. Despite this the voice-to-text built in to iPads works for her most of the time. She has to force herself to speak slowly and distinctly, and often gets frustrated having to repeat and correct, but she can use it pretty reliably. She then uses the text-to-voice feature to read the sentence back to her to be sure it says what she thinks it says. Time consuming but at least she can do it.