American literacy and the school caseload epidemic

Anyone else have tons of otherwise typically developing older kids that can't read on their caseload? I'm getting kids as old as 10 and 11 that have no sight words, sound symbol correspondance, or even letter recognition.

Do you think all of these kids truly have reading and learning disabilities that are leading to language disorders or is this because of the literacy problems that exist as a result of poor public education and limited parent involvement? I get so many referrals for kids going into middle school next year that test low in verbal skills on the School Psych batteries and they end up as SLD with speech pull outs. I just don't know how to help these kids and I don't know if a Speech Pathologist is the correct service to add on at such a late age with no reading skills continuing to be a barrier for their main idea/academic vocabulary goals.

What is your experience with literacy on your caseload? Do you think they're this far behind by nature or by failure of the system? We already know that in my district there's no MTSS before jumping to evals-they just wait for the kids to get worse after 3rd grade and then charge right into a Speech evaluation with no classroom interventions to weed out lack of instruction. I feel like my hands are tied with the mushrooming referrals.