8 year old boy possible dyslexia

I have an 8 year old son who has excelled at just about everything he has tried. With the exception of literacy. I have been working with the school to help him in any way possible. A concern was never brought up in preschool or Kindergarten. Granted he wrote backwards I knew from being a pre-k teacher that this wasn't uncommon. 1st grade is where the concerns began. He still continued to write and then read words either jumbled up or backwards. Oddly he would also mirror words for example when given a spelling test he would write every word on the left side of his paper in the correct direction with a letter backwards here or there but then the right side of the paper he would write every word backwards. I then began folding the paper in half so he could only write on the left side. That helped. When meeting with the teacher I was told she didn't know what to do. She had not experienced a child like my son. We had him tested for a learning disability but test came back to show there was no issue there. He has all the fundamentals to be able to read. One interesting observation they made was that he is right handed yet holds his pencil and has the same mannerisms as a left handed person. They continued to help him in smaller groups outside of special ed. Some improvement was made but he is still failing at his grade level but was allowed to move onto 2nd grade. Now in 2nd grade we still experience the same problems. It almost seems worse since words and numbers are getting larger. His frustration is increasing as is mine. I was most alarmed when he was doing number comparison of less, greater and equal to. Every number on the left was read backwards and every number on the right was correct. What really blew my mind was that one of the questions was 29 and 29 and he was so sure that it was 92 and 29. How can that happen when clearly they are the same number! He now asks me to tell him which number is the the tenth so he knows what to say first. This is all very confusing for me. I have no idea how to help him. He is so smart I don't understand why he doesn't get this. He even told me the other day that he was in 5th grade reading because he was reading a book with and "E" on the binding for the volume. I was thinking what on earth would make you think you are in 5th grade reading. He says duh mom, it says letter E. That's the 5th letter in the alphabet! Weird! His school is on this whole wait and see approach. I don't want to wait and see anymore. His teacher and I had decided in October to wait until February to reevaluate. I emailed her this week and told her I was ready to move forward. She insisted that I first have him tested for inattentiveness. Which is nicely wording "ADD." I was not happy about that! Has anyone else experienced this issues with the school? I can't even understand how a reversal of letters and numbers turns into him just not focusing. He strives for perfection and really truly wants to learn and be like all his other friends. He even borrows chapter books from the library at school and fakes reading them just to fit in. That doesn't show me inattentiveness. Not to mention I feel if this was a concern it would have been brought up long before 2nd grade. I think he just feels like a failure because no one is teaching him the way he needs to be taught and he has become discouraged. Any input from anyone who has been down this road would be greatly, greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance,
Angie