DizzyDaisies, I share your optimism, because as a remedial reading tutor I have seen rapid improvement in older children with decoding instruction, IF the reason they were low in skills was just because they were "behind" or somehow missed instruction. It happens a lot, actually, and sometimes the remediation can happen extremely quickly.
I do have some materials to suggest if you want to try remediating on your own. Hands down the best program I have ever worked with is called ABeCeDarian. It is brilliant, and dirt cheap as well compared to anything else out there. It has no fluff, just critically important foundational skills. However it does require a parent or tutor to work one on one with the student. It isn't something you set him in front of and assign 12 pages per day. You need to work it with him.
In a nutshell:
Book A: basic consonants, short vowels, and basic digraphs (th ch, sh, ng.) Basics of blending (reading) and segmenting (spelling) CVC, CCVC and CVCC words.
Book B1: most common vowel teams (ee, ea, er, igh, ow) organized by sound. One syllable words and a few two syllable words. This is the book I use most often for my remediation. The key has been to do each unit, and then have the students write the ten sentences given at the end of each unit as sentence dictation. Use the words for spelling practice.
Book B2: More complicated vowel teams and special cases, more two and three syllable words.
Book C: Prefixes and Suffixes -- this is a very important book for more advanced students.
Book D: Greek and Latin Suffixes -- Excellent to work through for middle schoolers.
The author of the program, Michael Bend, has a ton of free supplementary resources on his website for special situations. They are incredibly useful.
Here's a link to his website:
http://www.abcdrp.comThe workbooks cost something like $12 each which is dirt cheap compared to so many programs out there. This system is the fastest and most flexible of any I have tried, and I've explored a bunch.
Level A