I don't want to belabour the dyslexia possibility, but I will throw out there that counterintuitively, reading better when the text is harder is quite common among dyslexics (especially gifted ones). The more complex the text, the richer all those context cues are that help them guess their way through it. Dyslexics commonly skip over all the little words and excess syllables (which all tend to look the same) and instead jump from one "meaty" noun or verb to the next. The bigger those words, the easier they are to tell apart. (I was pretty shocked on page 1 of AAR, when DD made multiple errors on a list of three-letter words.... she kept guessing - as she always did - but here, finally, it showed.)
I'll also throw in a plug to think about trying AAR first, and not just the spelling program. In our own experience, because reading is far more rules-base than spelling, and has a finite number of rules, it was much easier to learn and made far more sense than spelling. Several people on the forum here have used only AAS successfully, but I confess the thought makes me shudder. I'm really glad we did AAR first.
