DENVER (AP) — Her desk was vacant for a week when high school physics teacher Marcus Pennell began to worry.

After Pennell asked a counselor at Ralston Valley High School what happened to the introverted and studious 16-year-old, he learned something about Emily Murray he hadn't known all year.

She was a foster kid.

And Emily was headed to another foster placement, in another county, to another high school.

Emily and three other foster teens had just been yanked from the Arvada home of a woman accused of spending her foster stipend on her grandchildren instead of buying the teens enough to eat. The freezer was full of frozen food they weren't allowed to touch. Emily had depleted her savings from her summer job at the YMCA buying meals, shampoo and other basics, and she alerted officials about the problems.

No foster homes in Arvada wanted the troubled, depressed girl who had just caused enough of a ruckus to get four kids transferred out of a placement. Her next move would mean her third high school.

But her physics teacher went home and told his wife, an elementary school principal, that the girl needed a home.

"That just seemed like the silliest thing ever to us — why would you have a kiddo who has been through so much have to change schools?" said Jennifer Pennell, the principal at Dutch Creek Elementary in Jefferson County.

The Pennells weren't certified foster parents, but within about two weeks, Emily was living with them and their 9-year-old daughter, although Emily had to split her time between their house in Golden and a Denver foster home until the Pennells were certified.

That kindness kept Emily at Ralston Valley High, the only place she had ever made friends. She graduated on time a year later, something fewer than one-quarter of foster kids in Colorado manage.

3 ½ high school moves

The four-year graduation rate for foster kids in Colorado last year — 23 percent — was lower even than among kids who are homeless. And it's getting worse. It's now the lowest since 2013, which is as far back as researchers have studied.

Each year, more than 200 foster kids in Colorado exit the system without a home, turned loose to begin life on their own at age 18. For those who do not finish high school, the likelihood of becoming homeless or ending up in jail is even higher — far more likely, in fact, than enrolling in college.

While 70 percent of foster kids in the country say they want to go to college, just 10 percent enroll, according to the National Center for Child Welfare Excellence. Only about 3 percent of foster youths who "age out" of the foster care system earn a college degree at any point in their lives, reports the National Foster Youth Institute.

The Colorado Department of Higher Education does not track how many foster kids enter college. But a data-sharing partnership between the state child welfare division and the state education department resulted in first-of-a-kind statistics so awful that they're startling.

"When I first looked at it, I thought, 'This can't be right,' " said Elysia Clemens, the University of Northern Colorado researcher who used the data to track foster kids through the education system. "It was very disheartening and surprising to see how much we need to do in order to change the odds for these young people."

Along with the bleak graduation rates, the research revealed:

Colorado foster kids change high schools an average of 3.5 times over four years. The greatest number of school changes for a single kid was 18.

Each school move is linked to an 8 percent drop in the likelihood of an on-time graduation.

By the end of middle school, just 13 percent of students in foster care in Colorado are at grade level in math.

When the results were shared at a table of state child welfare officials and Mile High United Way employees, the gathered people were sickened.

"Every single one of us had tears in our eyes," said Jerene Petersen, then-director of Mile High United Way and now deputy director of community partnerships for the Colorado Department of Human Services. "We think it's devastating. It's through no fault of their own. They are not choosing to change schools. They are not choosing to change placements."

"You pray to find out you are adopted"

This is the extent of what Marcus Pennell knew about Emily in his fourth-period physics class: She was "clean and didn't swear and had good work habits." It was more than most people know about foster children before taking them home.

"I remember meeting her, and she was determined to make it to college. She just needed people who have that knowledge base help her, to see her through that," Jennifer Pennell said.

Emily, whose hair is straight and blond, tends toward serious rather than smiley. She's the kind of girl, the Pennells learned, who needed time to "process" with them during heavy, late-night conversations after their young daughter had gone to bed. When they took her to buy new clothes to replace her hand-me-downs, Emily meticulously inspected the seams and the stitches.

Emily entered foster care at 14 after years of depression, the result of living in an abusive home, she said. Police, and sometimes child welfare workers, visited their house while she was growing up.

Emily's older brother lived there, too, but her mother saved all of her rage for Emily. Most of the abuse was psychological, Emily said.

If she didn't finish her dinner, for example, the same plate of food was returned to her for breakfast. Then for lunch. Then for dinner.

Emily said that the first time she thought about killing herself came at age 10. "You pray to find out you are adopted and your real parents are coming to save you," she said.

At 14, child welfare caseworkers placed her at Tennyson Center, a Denver residential treatment facility for children who have been abused and have mental health issues. She stayed for six months, doing her high school work online by "sitting in front of a computer screen" for hours each day.

Emily was treated for severe depression, but "no amount of meds was going to fix me at that point," she said.

At Christmastime that year, she spent a week with family friends interested in becoming her foster family. Emily returned to Tennyson for what she thought was one last night to pack her bags before they picked her up the next day. Instead, she was told they were no longer interested. She was "too distant," she recalled them saying.

"That really hurt a lot," Emily said, looking down at her hands.

By the time Emily moved in with the Pennells, she already had decided not "to get attached to anyone else." It was her sixth placement in two years.

In little more than a year, she would age out of foster care.

"It's like going to Mars"

At Forward Steps, the only Colorado-based organization solely focused on helping aged-out foster kids make it through college, the biggest challenge is finding them.

"The tragedy of the situation is that foster youth are invisible by design when they are in the system, to protect their privacy," said Julia Goldstein, director of development. "When they leave the system, they become invisible not by design."

No central agency keeps track of foster kids after they've aged out, so Forward Steps works with county child welfare departments and nonprofits to try to catch young people as they are heading out on their own. The organization helps a handful of students each year with $6,000 scholarships for living expenses not covered by federal grants for tuition or vouchers for housing.

This semester, there are seven scholars at schools around Colorado, including at the Community College of Denver. They attend a "college boot camp," as well as workshops on budgeting and financial aid, and group get-togethers for moral support.

"Just giving them money and telling them to do it doesn't work. They aren't ready for that," Goldstein said.

Even with the support, many drop out. Of the eight students in the program last fall, three did not enroll this semester. Forward Steps is expanding eligibility from age 21 to 26 in the hopes of reaching more students. The organization has plans to provide 20 scholarships next year — more than double its current level but still a tiny fraction of the hundreds of aged-out foster kids who could qualify.

The program's dropout rates are similar to national statistics showing less than one-quarter of former foster youths who enter college make it to graduation. For many, it's a matter of balancing their newfound independence with work and school.

"Young people in foster care often don't grow up with the expectation that they are going to college. It's like going to Mars," said Amy Dworsky, who researches foster youth outcomes at the University of Chicago's Chapin Hall. "They can't pick up the phone and call Mom or Dad and get advice. It's probably very scary."

"A normal family"

The Pennells took Emily in part because it was a commitment with a time limit — she had only one more year at Ralston Valley High and was intent on college.

As Marcus put it, he wouldn't have "known how to help a kid with drug abuse problems," but he knew how to help Emily fill out college applications and the financial aid forms that would give her maximum federal grant amounts because she was a foster kid. He also taught her how to drive.

Emily was up for it as soon as she knew it was a possibility, desperate to stay at her high school. After she was moved from her Arvada foster home to one in Denver, her caseworker told her that one of her teachers was considering becoming her foster parent.

She figured out it was Marcus, and the next time she walked out of physics class, she said, "My caseworker is planning to call you." Awkward as it was, Emily did it to let him know she was good with it.

Marcus, though, was stunned.

"Now if we say no, we are basically saying no to her face," he recalled, angry that child welfare workers would let such information slip. He blames the system's constant state of "crisis mode" and overloaded caseworkers for what he termed a reckless way to handle a potential child placement.

The year they spent together "was an entirely worthwhile experience, helping another human being," Jennifer said. It wasn't easy, though, for any of them.

The Pennell home was the first one where Emily's foster parents had a younger, biological child. Their girl, age 9 when Emily moved in, was ecstatic about getting an older sister. Emily, though, wasn't ready to bond. She was annoyed that Amelia was so excited to hang out with her that she would open Emily's bedroom door to let the family dogs jump on her bed and wake her up.

"That was a time for me to heal," Emily said. "I couldn't trust people. I couldn't get close. I was prepared for it if they decided they didn't want me."

She also was resentful. When Amelia pushed her half-eaten dinner away and said she was finished, Emily was in awe. "I was for sure jealous," she said.

For Jennifer and Marcus, it was a difficult balance, raising two girls with opposite upbringings. Their home is "far more loose and understanding" than any of Emily's previous experiences, Jennifer said.

"Moving in with the Pennells was the first time I could see a normal family with normal interactions with a kid," Emily said.

They devoted hours to college application deadlines, financial aid forms and campus tours. Emily ended up with options.

She chose the University of Colorado at Boulder, where she is now in her second year and majoring in psychology and Spanish. She sees the Pennells about every three weeks, and they have told her, "Regardless of the hour, we don't care, just call us and we will be there." She's also reconnected with her brother, a recent CU graduate.

Emily, 20, and Amelia, now 12, are close; they call each other sisters. Two weeks after Emily left for college, Amelia burst through the front door after school and shouted, "Hi, Ems," forgetting Emily no longer lived there, a scene that made her mom cry. The little girl told her parents that knowing Emily has made her a more "humble person," that she hadn't realized before "how everything I ever wanted was provided for me."

Emily regrets now that she couldn't "express the gratitude I feel for them" while she was living with the Pennells. Her edges were still too sharp. Similarly, she recognizes now, she initially judged her college classmates for partying instead of studying — the difference in their life experiences so vast.

Lately, she has felt herself soften. "Some people have different lives — and that's OK. It's OK for me to have the life I've had."

The Pennells started telling Emily recently that they love her. She wants to say it back, but so far, the words haven't come.

"I'm trying to open up, but not let myself feel too vulnerable," Emily said. "I know I'll continue to heal for many years, maybe the rest of my life."

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Information from: The Denver Post, http://www.denverpost.com