As a former pupil that took 7+years of Latin, I think the probability of actually reading latin texts fluently today would have been orders of magnitude higher had instruction been coupled with Ørberg. I still want to be able to read hobbitus ille, but no thanks to my Latin classes (and I think I had decent teachers).

Thanks for the perspective! I guess it depends on the outcomes in question

If they're measured by traditional academic metrics (parsing, recalling declension tables, translating into English), then Wheelock's grammar-first approach really does optimize for that. On the other hand Ørberg optimizes more for reading fluency and intuitive comprehension, which is harder to measure on a standard Latin exam.

As an aside, do you still teach Latin? If not, any online recommendations for Latin tutors? Thanks in advance.

In which case, I’ll drop the books of the late Reginald Foster who taught at the Gregorian University, Teresianum and Urbanianum and worked in the Latin Letters section of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State: Ossa Latinitatis Sola, Ossium Carnes Multae, and Os Praesens Reginaldi Docentis.

I've only been on the student side of this (with Hebrew), but that has been my experience as well. These sorts of books can work, but it needs extraordinarily good teachers to do so.