Juanita Crawford was arrested in June 2000 and charged with conspiracy and reckless endangerment. She had just finished eighth grade.

Four years later, Juanita was released from custody, having received about nine months of schooling.

“It was a day-by-day process,” the 17-year-old testified at a City Council hearing yesterday morning. “Some days I was doing work. Some days I was not. It was just about taking advantage of all that was given to me, and there wasn’t too much to take advantage of.”

Not only did Juanita fall behind academically when she was awaiting her trial and then serving her sentence, but she was also encouraged to study for the GED test, rather than pursuing academics with the goal of earning a high-school diploma. She called the advice “discouraging.”

“I can’t be what I want to be with a GED,” she testified, later saying she wants to be a poet.

Even though Juanita and her family started researching high schools as soon as she was released last June, she then had trouble obtaining her records from state officials and was unable to start school until the second week of October.

Council Member Eva Moskowitz, who convened yesterday’s hearing, said she was troubled by the strong emphasis on GEDs at the schools within the city’s correctional facilities for juveniles. “I’m concerned about the dead end nature of the GEDs,” she said.

Ms. Moskowitz, a Democrat of Manhattan who is chairwoman of the council’s Committee on Education, also said the city should make it easier for students leaving jails to make the transition back into regular schools.

The senior counselor to the chancellor for education policy, Michele Cahill, who testified at the hearing, said about 10,000 students each year spend time in schools at the city’s detention centers. She said 25% of them read below fifth-grade level and 90% are over-age and under-credited. Many of the students also have social and behavioral problems.

The Department of Education has created enrollment offices, which Ms. Cahill said expedite school placement upon release. She said the department is also pursuing a memorandum of understanding with the Office of Children and Family Services to improve file sharing so students will have more seamless transitions into public schools.

A teacher who testified, Jeffrey Kaufman, said the transition is far from smooth. He said he receives phone calls from children who have been released from custody, asking for help finding a new school, and usually refers them to Legal Aid.

Ms. Moskowitz said all of the imperfections in the system add up to a “very, very significant problem.”

“It’s a crisis,” she said. ‘We are not adequately educating kids when they are in lockup … and not transitioning them well.”