Thank you both!
I had never heard of automaticity before, and I think I'm going to look into that a lot more. I will fully admit that his phonological processing is generally OKish. Like, he doesn't really struggle to sound words out slowly. Sometimes, though, he confidently mispronounces a new word.
I'd be hesitant to go too deep into a strict OG thing with a focus on processing the sounds. I think he'd be insulted that it was "babyish", and think that his real deficit is in the reading comprehension. The HELPS resources may be just what we need. I've also been thinking about doing a bit with Latin and Greek roots, which could help with spelling/decoding/new vocab.
I also feel somewhat concerned that even while the reading comprehension scores here are coming up comparatively low, I really think that the situation gets far worse when it comes to the "grade level" type reading, like novels for guided reading.
He was assigned this one book, and I looked at it in the library, and smugly thought, "There's no [expletive] way my kid can read and understand this. Surely, the teacher will see what I mean with this." but then when the packet of questions he answered came back, she had written "Great job! This is your best yet!" As I read through his answers, it's incredibly apparent that he doesn't know what he's reading. Some of them appeared to be just plain wrong (according to an answer key I found online), but the teacher allowed them because they were "What do you think?" type questions. I showed copies of this to a friend who's a reading curriculum developer and a retired upper elementary teacher. The teacher friend said, "If this child is being described as bright, there's a problem."
I think that because he generally comes off as pretty smart and together, things like a poorly-worded answer or something that would otherwise show lack of understanding with the text are overlooked.
aeh--I do have the word reading and pseudoword decoding scores (also, in case it's helpful, showing scores from last time he took the test):
Word reading 2018 54(raw) 120(scaled)
Word reading 2015 117(scaled)
Pseudoword 2018 33(raw) 109(scaled)
Pseudoword 2015 115(scaled)
ADHD is definitely a concern of mine. I was diagnosed with inattentive type as an adult. Never would have thought I had it as a child as I was a super-star student (grade-skipped, subject accelerated in math, valedictorian). The neuropsychologist gave him the computer test for that (Connor something maybe) and said that he did fine on that. I think like 50th percentile.
I can definitely see the CAPD. There are definitely times when he mis-hears things, though his auditory tests come out fine. I guess, though, I'm not entirely sure whether I should pursue testing in this area. Like, right now, it seems like it would just make my son feel bad that I keep looking for "something wrong". His teacher has sort of been pushing a narrative of "It's just a confidence issue because his mom's expectations are too high, so he'll do better if I keep telling him what a great reader he is." Like, he tends to make smart choices in the classroom, such as going to a quiet area to work, so I don't know if there's anything that I would need to actively advocate for.
The big bummer about that is that I was really shooting for the dyslexia diagnosis to advocate for audiobooks, thinking that this would improve comprehension, and now I'm not sure that's the case.
I'm also just kind of bummed because I was thinking *finally* the difference in abilities is obvious enough that it might matter, but it seems like it's still not. Really, I'm looking toward trying to pre-emptively fix things that he might struggle with in junior high the year after next. If I'm reading the scores (and the extensive Googling I've done) correctly, it seems like he may have been close to meeting a diagnostic criteria. For instance, there's a 20-point difference between the GORT and the FSIQ, and I think it needs to be 22.5 to count as a "problem". There's also 29 points between math and reading comprehension on the WIAT, which is close to the 2SD difference that usually signifies a LD, right? Although, now that it seems that audiobooks aren't the big solution I was thinking of, I'm not sure that the diagnosis matters.
Anyway, I really appreciate the input and suggestions here.
