Seems like they deliberately made reading far harder and more difficult than it is.
They went for a philosophy that says reading comes naturally, like walking. The whole language approach is very confusing and frustrating for children. I did a lot of research on this inane approach years ago when my kids briefly entered public school.
Long story short, I wound up home-schooling, building a nice little tutoring business, writing my own reading/spelling program, working with our local boards to get SOME phonetic teaching, and now I’m helping home-school the grandkids.
I have come to the conclusion that it’s intentional - an illiterate population is much easier to control.