Faces of the invisible achievement gap
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| Rayvon Spencer (photo by Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post) |
In Colorado, homeless students are nearly twice as likely to graduate from high school as children in the foster care system.
That startling statistic is the crux of our Sunday story that examines the academic hurdles facing foster-care kids and Colorado’s efforts to turn that around.
Here, we hear more from four impressive young people who overcame those odds and have bright futures.
Rayvon Spencer, 22, now studying at the Community College of Denver
At 2 years old, Rayvon was taken from his parents and put into the foster care system. He was adopted at 5 but things only got worse under the influence of drug-addicted parents who fought daily, he said. He and his adopted brothers were kept in a basement. His sisters lived upstairs. He ran away at 17 and eventually earned a GED.
On isolation as a foster care child:
“A person’s mind isn’t there, especially coming out of foster care, because no one is there to be there for them through the thick and thin. No one is there through life, teaching what being mature is.”
On the ideal setting for foster children:
“Each foster child should have one specific home, for one specific child, so that way, you don’t have an adult focused on so many different things, so many different kids. One or two or three (children), not a group of people. That makes it so much easier for that foster parent and for those kids to get to where they want to get.”
Latisha Barrington (photo by Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)
Latisha Alvarado Barrington, 21, studying at CU Denver
When Latisha was 8, her parents left her and her siblings home alone. Her baby brother was crying and wouldn’t stop. The children found a nipple, filled a Gatorade bottle with formula and fed him. Then, a firm knock on the door. Two Denver police officers. Latisha said she was the babysitter. “How old are you?” they asked. She said 13. So began a journey through the foster care system that took her to a dozen placements in a few short years.
On how her biological parents influenced her schooling and her Foster care youth: Faces of the invisible achievement gap: