You can bring your kids reading up to par.

You can bring your children’s reading, arithmetic, science and other subject’s grades up to par. Start out by getting your kids teacher to give you the kid’s test scores.  This will give you something to compare progress against.  If the teacher won’t show you your kid’s test scores go the next school board meeting and complain. 

   To learn reading, the kid has to read.  Which means you have to have some appropriate books in the house.  For real young kids Dr Seuss is great.  Likewise Shel Silverstein.  Take the kid[s] book shopping with you.  Comic books (graphic novels) can be good.  Check to see of the kid likes it, and check to see if you like it.  You can refuse to buy any graphic novels that you disapprove of. 

  For older kids Tolkien is great.  Likewise an Oz book, Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, Fletcher Pratt stories, especially “Battles that Changed History” is fantastic.  Science fiction, Robert Heinlein, Jerry Pournelle, Andre Norton,  Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Hal Clement, E. E. Smith, L Sprague DeCamp, Larry Niven, and many others. 

   Then you have to encourage the kid to read.  Sit down with your kid and a good book.  Read a paragraph to the kid.  Ask the kid to read a paragraph to you,  When the kid strikes a word that he doesn’t know, let him work on it for a bit and then tell him how it is pronounced and what it means. 

   Then the kid will need to know phonics so he can sound out new words.  When the kid is just starting to read, he will hit a lot of words he doesn’t know.  With phonics the kid can sound the word out and get it.  For phonics the kid need to know the sounds of all 26 letters of the alphabet.  The Alphabet song is good for this. The he needs to know the five vowels, and the long and short sounds of each of the five vowels, and some of the rules that make vowels long or short.  For instance if the word ends in E the vowel is long.

   And, very important, read a bedtime story to the kid[s] every night.  This shows the kid[s] that reading can be fun after they learn how to do it.

   You are probably better at choosing books for your kids than any teacher.  My youngest had nothing but age inappropriate, or boring, or nasty dystrophies worse than 1984,  or heart breaking stories like the one about a young girl Afghan who had her favorite pet camel seized by the Taliban and used to fed the troops.

   After a year of this kind of practice that kid will be reading better, maybe reading at grade level.