Truancy plus crime equals faulty education.

Byline: Joe Robertson, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Jan. 2--"Everybody wants to point fingers at everyone else, but kids are out on the street hurting each other. No one's talking, and it's a fiasco." Alan DuBois, executive director of the alternative charter Genesis School They're in school now. This time they have no choice.

They file into classes in beige scrubs, looking out on winter-bare hills beyond the high and locked fences that surround Jackson County's McCune Residential Center. For these transplanted teenagers, an overwhelmed and sometimes fractious network of alternative education lost its grip. As truants and dropouts, they mirror the 65 percent of teens in Jackson County's detention school in 2004-05 who were out of school when they were arrested for crimes. That was up from 46 percent just five years ago. They had plans -- and still do. One Kansas City teen sees himself as an auto technician. Another wants to teach physical education. One imagines opening a garage. A Lee's Summit dropout said he wanted to be an electrician. But they'll have to find their way with sporadic education beyond elementary school, a GED if they can earn it, and a juvenile record for violence. Since the eighth grade, one Kansas City 16-year-old "just went to school to find out when there was going to be a…