Don’t give up on your reader!  Too often, the pressures and demands of the classroom setting cause teachers to hurry struggling students along too quickly.   The circumstances demand that a specific amount of progress be documented by the end of the school year or other defined date.

However, learning isn’t really on a schedule.  If your child is marching to a different drummer in terms of learning pace, it’s not the end of the world.  You sometimes can make up the difference by supplementing classroom reading lessons and giving your student additional instructional time.  Other times, you can just extend reading lessons beyond the end of the school year, moving forward with learning while classmates are standing still or even moving backwards.  Finally, the end of formal schooling is not the end of learning.  Reading instruction can continue after that point, as well.

The main focus should be taking the student as far as possible and making progress, rather than meeting outside expectations about pacing.  Instruction will be more successful if it is paced in such a way that your student achieves success.  So make the goal a bit smaller.  Strive for progress and improvement instead of complete literacy.  Both you and your student will be much more relaxed that way, and a whole lot more likely to succeed.