ROBERTSDALE, Alabama --- Curbing the literacy problem has long been an issue in Alabama and throughout the United States.

Nationwide, statistics show that 14 percent of Americans over the age of 16 can be considered illiterate. In Alabama, the latest statistics shows that the number stands at around 15 percent, but the numbers are declining, down from around 21 percent in 1992.

“It all starts here,” said Faye Sheppard, principal of Robertsdale Elementary School. “We want to do all we can to identify problems early and get these students on the right path to learning.”

In recently years, funding has been an issue for the school system with all of the money going to get teachers in the classroom, Sheppard said, leaving no funding for extra programs such as tutors.

“Last year the Baldwin County Literacy Foundation helped provide tutors for our reading programs,” Sheppard said. RES has also received help from the Central Baldwin Education Foundation.

Sheppard is also looking to a program funded by the City of Robertsdale which targets at-risk students.

Using the Barton Reading & Spelling System, the nine-week course held over the summer at RES is designed to improve reading and writing skills.

“The course is designed for dyslexic students, but it’s effective for any child struggling with reading and writing skills,” said Theresa Brooks, a former educator with 22 years of experience teaching in both public and private schools.

Brooks, along with 29-year teaching veteran Julie Waters, headed up the program. Along with teachers Scarlett Fountain and Stephanie Hull, Brooks and Waters used the program to provide one-on-one phonetics training using the Barton system.

“Generally students tend to fall backward on their reading and writing skills over the summer, so if you can maintain those skills it is considered a success,” Waters said. When tested in August, the 12 students who completed the nine-week course actually showed improvement over tests that were administered before the end of the 2011-12 school year in May.

“I believe that is a significant result,” Sheppard said. Most of the students tested were second graders with a few first graders mixed in. “If we can target these students before the third grade and can get them on the right path, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.”

Brooks and Waters brought their results to the Robertsdale City Council earlier this month in hopes that the camp can continue into the future. Cost of the program is about $300 per level per student. While students were reading at varying levels coming into the program, Waters said, all were reading at about Level 3 of the 10-level program by the end of the course.

The course targets students at all reading levels, through high school and can also be used at the adult level, Brooks said.

Sheppard said she hopes programs such as these will make a significant impact for education and behavioral modification for at-risk students.

“It is our belief that when a student has difficulty learning that they are more likely to act out on their frustration,” she said. “If they are frustrated with learning at this level, it can escalate at the middle school level and become even worse as they enter high school.”

Students who are frustrated with education can also be more likely to drop out of school when they get to the high school level, Sheppard said. That is one area that has become a concern, particularly at Robertsdale High School.

A recent paper by the Alabama Training Institute at Auburn University at Montgomery cited a Southern Education Foundation study stating that nationwide, roughly 30 percent of the 1 million American students who begin the ninth grade each year don’t graduate.

Over the last 25 years, Alabama has consistently ranked between 42nd and 47th in the nation in graduation rates with only about 60 percent of the state’s students graduating.

When interviewed for an article back in April, Terry C. Wilhite, director of communications for Baldwin County Public Schools, said a recent change in how graduation rates are calculated has caused percentages across Alabama to plummet.

“The issue in computing graduation rate revolves around student tracking,” Wilhite said.

When a student withdraws from a school system, such as moving to another school system or becomes a home-schooled student, or if a student dies and proper documentation isn’t received, Wilhite said, then that student is considered a drop out.

“If student tracking were better, the numbers would be higher,” he said.

Alabama now uses the four-year adjusted cohort graduation formula. As defined by the Alabama State Department of Education, the four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate is the “number of students who graduate in four years with a regular diploma divided by the number of students who form the adjusted cohort for the graduating class.” The adjusted cohort begins by selecting all first time ninth grade students and then tracking those students as they move through the 10th, 11th and 12th grades and adding any students who transfer into the cohort and removing any students who transfer out.

“When the new formula came out a few months ago, all school districts statewide saw graduation rate numbers plummet just because the calculation method changed,” Wilhite said.

Under the old formula, graduation rates in Baldwin County ranged from 87 percent (at BCHS) to 95 percent (Fairhope and Gulf Shores). Daphne and Robertsdale’s graduation rates were calculated at 93 percent, with Spanish Fort at 92 percent and Foley at 91 percent.

Using the new formula, rates plummeted to as low as 63 percent at BCHS. Robertsdale’s graduation rate fell to 65 percent with Foley at 67 percent, Fairhope, 83 percent, and Daphne, Gulf Shores and Spanish Fort each at 88 percent.

Sheppard said she hopes the city and others will continue to support and expand programs like the Barton system in the future to target at-risk students.

“Again, we are responsible at the lowest levels of education to ensure that these students are getting on the right path to learning,” Sheppard said, “and with programs such as these we are doing just that.”