It was called whole word learning in my location (PA) circa 90s. My kids had to do stupid shit like draw borders around a word over and over while repeating it. Their homework directions never made sense to me so we practiced sounding things out. They were not encouraged to learn sounds in school— just memorize the word. If you didn’t know the word you were to look at the first and last letters and guess what belongs in context. Of course if you can’t read any of the other words guessing context is impossible. When my son struggled to read, the reading specialist gave me a book of essential words for him to memorize at home. Multiple times a year the kids did collages to match pictures to letters or words. We were told to work on it at home so I had to sign up for and save magazines to use the pictures. It was a useless, time-wasting project. Then there were the stupid assemblies that occurred regularly—90 minutes of yo-yo entertainers who were invited back every year, fund raising assemblies to sell wrapping paper (mostly to myself and my parents), the obligatory follow-up assembly to distribute the shitty prizes. My favorite was the year they gave my son an award for a poem he wrote (Yay! We were so proud) and then the school tried to sell us a book of poetry written by all the 5th grade prize winners in PA. Who tf wants a book of 5th grade poetry? We framed and hung his poem on the wall. All this to say schools appeared to be focused on everything except reading comprehension. Complaining parents were assured THEY were the problem. My kids ended up in private school because I didn’t want them to be functionally illiterate as so many others have. I am not surprised by reading levels in the US. Defunding US public education is possibly the most successful move republicans made early on. It has worked brilliantly for them.