Susan Barton Method

The Susan Barton Method, more formally the Barton Reading & Spelling System, is the dyslexia remediation program most frequently recommended by private evaluators when a family cannot access, or afford, professional Orton-Gillingham tutoring. It is a ten-level, parent-tutored, video-scripted program that takes three to five years to complete and, completed faithfully, works.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Orton-Gillingham-derived / structured-literacy / parent-tutored
Worldview	Secular
Grades	K through adult; typical entry ages 5-14 depending on severity of dyslexia
Formats	Physical kit (DVDs, tiles, manipulatives, manuals)
Cost tier	Premium
Parent intensity	5
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	No (private program; many states recognize for IEP-related services)
Established	Program developed and released by Susan Barton starting in 1998; Bright Solutions for Dyslexia founded 1998
Website	bartonreading.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Rigorous application of Orton-Gillingham principles at parent-deliverable specificity
Ease of teaching	3	Fully scripted and video-demonstrated, but tutoring requires 3-5 weekly sessions for years
Content quality	5	Built by a practicing dyslexia specialist; each level refined across multiple editions
Flexibility	2	Rigid sequence by design; mastery-based pacing means no skipping
Value for money	3	Expensive up front; cheaper per hour than hiring an O-G tutor
Worldview scope	5	Entirely secular, usable by any family
Visual/design	3	Functional manipulatives and DVDs; not visually polished
Support resources	5	Extensive publisher support, diagnostic pre-testing, troubleshooting phone support

Who the publisher is

The Barton Reading & Spelling System was developed by Susan Barton, a dyslexia specialist and trained Orton-Gillingham practitioner who founded Bright Solutions for Dyslexia in 1998. Barton developed the program after tutoring her own family members and concluding that existing Orton-Gillingham materials, while effective, required professional training that put them out of reach of most families of dyslexic children. Her design decision was to codify the O-G approach into a scripted, video-demonstrated, parent-deliverable format, a significant departure from the O-G tradition, which had historically been transmitted through professional training programs like those offered by the Academy of Orton-Gillingham Practitioners and the International Multisensory Structured Language Education Council.

Bright Solutions for Dyslexia sells the Barton System direct to families through bartonreading.com and maintains a parallel educational operation through dys-add.com providing free dyslexia information, symptom screening, and resource lists. Barton herself continues to present nationally and to maintain direct contact with families using the program; the operation remains small and owner-led despite substantial user base.

Scale: Barton reports tens of thousands of families having used the system since its 1998 launch, and the program is recommended by a wide range of private dyslexia evaluators, speech-language pathologists, and educational psychologists when professional O-G tutoring is not accessible. The International Dyslexia Association does not certify Barton as an "IDA-Accredited" program (accreditation is available only to training programs for teachers, not to curricula), but Barton materials are commonly used by IDA-accredited practitioners as part of their practice.

The core pedagogy

Barton is a ten-level, strictly sequential, mastery-based program grounded in the structured-literacy principles of Orton-Gillingham. Each level addresses a specific set of phonological, phonemic, and orthographic skills, layered in an order that follows the developmental arc of reading acquisition: phonological awareness first, then single-syllable consonant-vowel-consonant words, then blends, digraphs, syllable types, multisyllabic decoding, and finally advanced spelling rules and Latin/Greek morphology.

The tutoring structure is the heart of the method. A lesson is scripted in the tutor's manual sentence-by-sentence and demonstrated on accompanying DVDs by Susan Barton herself. The parent (or tutor) follows the script verbatim during the session, using color-coded letter tiles, finger-tapping routines, and sequential decoding-and-encoding exercises. Every skill is introduced through direct instruction, practiced to mastery, and reviewed cumulatively in every subsequent lesson. No skill is considered learned until the student demonstrates reliable application without prompting across multiple sessions.

This is structured literacy at its most methodical. The method's three signature commitments: (1) Explicit instruction, nothing is left for the student to infer; every skill is named, defined, demonstrated, and practiced; (2) Systematic sequencing, the skill order follows the known developmental progression of reading acquisition, and skipping ahead is strictly disallowed; (3) Multisensory delivery, every lesson engages sight (tiles), sound (teacher voice and student voicing), and motor movement (tile manipulation, finger tapping, hand-writing) simultaneously.

Signature mechanics: (1) Pre-screening with the Barton Student Screening. Before purchasing the system, families administer the free Barton Student Screening to determine whether the child has the prerequisite phonological awareness; students who fail the screening are directed to LiPS (Lindamood Phoneme Sequencing) first. (2) Ten levels, roughly six to eighteen months each. Typical total program duration is three to five years. (3) Color-coded tiles and DVD-demonstrated scripts for every lesson. (4) Mastery-pacing. No time pressure; the student advances when reliable accuracy is reached, not on a schedule. (5) Phone support. Susan Barton's team takes calls from struggling families and provides troubleshooting.

A day in the life

A nine-year-old student diagnosed with dyslexia and working in Barton Level 3 typically completes three to five tutoring sessions per week, 45 to 60 minutes per session. The parent sits at a table with the child, the tutor's manual open, the letter tiles arranged on a cloth mat, and the DVD cued to the current lesson. Session opens with a review of prior lessons' skills (10-15 minutes, spot-checked by reviewing tiles and decoding a few words). New instruction follows the day's script (15-20 minutes), with the parent delivering the explanation, demonstrating the skill with tiles, and checking for understanding. Controlled practice follows (15-20 minutes), during which the student reads and spells words exclusively within the current and prior skill set. Session closes with a brief review of what was covered.

The program does not permit outside reading during early levels, a non-negotiable that frequently surprises new families. Until the student has mastered specific decoding skills, exposure to uncontrolled text produces confusion and reinforces guessing strategies. By Level 4, controlled outside reading is reintroduced; by Level 6, the student is typically capable of grade-level-plus reading for pleasure.

The parent time cost is substantial: 3 to 5 hours per week, sustained over 3 to 5 years. Families completing Barton are committing to a remediation intensity comparable to hiring a private tutor twice a week for the same period, at a fraction of the dollar cost but with the full time investment coming from the family.

What they do exceptionally well

Effective dyslexia remediation deliverable by a parent. The program's essential claim, that a committed parent with no prior training can deliver effective Orton-Gillingham-derived dyslexia instruction, is borne out in thousands of documented cases. Barton-completed students routinely move from multiple-year reading deficits to grade-level reading by program end, and the research-consistent principles of structured literacy underpin the method. The body of evidence on structured literacy for dyslexia supports the approach Barton implements; the publisher's contribution is making that approach deliverable at home.

Pre-screening discipline. Barton's requirement that students pass the Student Screening before beginning is a distinguishing practice. Students who lack sufficient phonological awareness are not sold Barton; they are directed to LiPS or similar phonological-awareness programming first. This is unusual publisher discipline, most programs do not gate their own entry, and it dramatically improves outcomes for families who follow the sequence.

Publisher support to families. Susan Barton's team takes phone calls from struggling families, answers detailed technical questions about lesson execution, and provides troubleshooting for stuck students. This level of publisher support is rare in homeschool publishing and uniquely useful for families attempting their first dyslexia remediation without professional guidance.

What they do poorly

Rigidity and time commitment. The program is inflexible by design. Families cannot skip levels, cannot accelerate past mastery pacing, and cannot supplement with general reading until the prescribed gates are passed. For families whose children have mild phonological difficulties rather than dyslexia, Barton is heavy artillery; a lighter program like All About Reading may produce equivalent outcomes with less time investment.

Cost up front. Each of the ten Barton levels is priced at approximately $300 to $350 as of April 2026, with a complete program purchase approaching $3,000 to $3,500 over the full duration. Most families purchase one or two levels at a time rather than the whole program at once; the publisher permits and supports this. Still, the total outlay is significant.

No general reading sequence beyond remediation. Barton teaches dyslexic students to decode and spell; it does not teach literature, composition, or the broader reading-life curriculum that a non-dyslexic student's language-arts program would include. Families running Barton alongside a regular school program need to plan for what subject slot Barton replaces and what continues in parallel.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick the Susan Barton Method if: your child has been identified as dyslexic by a private or school-based evaluator or shows the hallmark symptoms, persistent difficulty with phonological awareness, decoding, and spelling despite adequate instruction; you can commit 3 to 5 hours per week of direct one-on-one tutoring for three to five years; you cannot access or afford a qualified Orton-Gillingham tutor ($60-$120/hour, twice weekly, for years); you are willing to follow a strict mastery sequence without skipping ahead; your child needs structured-literacy intensity, not general reading practice.

• Skip the Susan Barton Method if: your child's reading difficulty is not dyslexic in pattern (slower general development is different from a specific decoding deficit); you cannot sustain 3+ weekly tutoring sessions over multiple years; you want a program your child can self-direct; you prefer a less-expensive general phonics program like All About Reading; you have access to, and resources for, a credentialed O-G tutor in person, which remains the gold standard where available.

Cost honest assessment

As of April 2026, individual Barton levels are priced at approximately $300 to $350 each, with the full ten-level program running approximately $3,000 to $3,500 over 3 to 5 years of use. The publisher permits re-sale of used levels among families, and an active secondary market exists for completed levels, which reduces net cost materially for families who plan ahead.

Compared to private Orton-Gillingham tutoring at $60 to $120 per hour for 2 to 3 weekly sessions over 3 years (a total outlay of $20,000 to $60,000), Barton represents a dramatic cost reduction in exchange for parent time. Compared to general dyslexia programs such as All About Reading (approximately $170 per level, 4 levels, not specifically dyslexia-targeted) or Logic of English Essentials (approximately $150-$200, not specifically dyslexia-targeted), Barton is more expensive per level but more clinically targeted for dyslexic students. For a family with a verified dyslexia diagnosis, the comparison is not Barton versus All About Reading; it is Barton versus professional O-G tutoring.

A realistic all-in family budget for one dyslexic student completing the full Barton program over four years runs $3,000 to $3,800, excluding supplementary general-education programming that continues in parallel.

ESA eligibility notes

The Barton System is commonly approved on state ESA marketplaces that fund special-needs curriculum, including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students marketplace, and Utah's Utah Fits All. Several state ESA programs specifically include dyslexia-remediation materials and may permit higher allocation for students with a documented dyslexia diagnosis; Florida's Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities and Arizona's Empowerment Scholarship Account both have provisions relevant to dyslexia. Because Barton is secular, it clears religious-content restrictions without complication. Families with a documented dyslexia diagnosis should explore whether their state ESA provides additional funding beyond the base allocation.

Alternatives

• Wilson Reading System, a family with school-district access would choose Wilson over Barton because Wilson is commonly available through public-school special-education departments at no family cost, with the tutoring delivered by a credentialed teacher rather than a parent, at the cost of requiring enrollment in a school system that offers it.
• All About Reading / All About Spelling, a family whose child has mild phonological difficulty rather than dyslexia would choose All About Reading over Barton because AAR is lighter, less time-intensive, and less expensive, at the cost of less clinical targeting for true dyslexic profiles.
• Lindamood-Bell LiPS + Seeing Stars, a family whose child fails the Barton pre-screening would use LiPS first for phonological-awareness remediation before attempting Barton, and some families continue with Seeing Stars for sight-word processing rather than transitioning to Barton.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the complete Barton Reading & Spelling System product catalog at bartonreading.com, the Barton Student Screening materials, Susan Barton's published biography, and the companion educational resources at dys-add.com. We cross-referenced the structured-literacy principles underlying the program with International Dyslexia Association guidance and Orton-Gillingham Academy materials. Prices and level contents verified April 2026.