For more than two decades from 1995 until 2017, the Newark Public Schools (NPS) district has been controlled by the State of New Jersey Department of Education (NJ DOE). It is the largest and one of the oldest school districts in New Jersey. Approximately 2,700 teachers educate 37,000 students in the district’s 64 traditional public schools. The student population is composed of three subgroups that include: General Education, Disabled and Limited English Proficient. The student grade level enrolment consists of 6 % Pre-Kindergarten, 68 % Kindergarten to Eighth, and 36 % Ninth to Twelfth. Each classroom reflects a multi-ethnic population that is predominantly Hispanic, Black, White and the remainder drawn from a combination of Asian, Pacific Islanders and Native-Americans. The district is currently led and managed by an appointed superintendent and a locally elected, Type-2, school board. The superintendent’s efforts are supported by a cabinet that aid with the daily function and operation of the district. The cabinet is composed of the School Business Administrator, Deputy-Superintendent, five Assistant-Superintendents, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Talent Officer and General Council. This single case study centres on the efforts of the state takeover in reforming the district’s operations and its influence on student achievement from 2011 to 2017. The data analysis focuses on archival data and documents from the state, municipality, district and high schools relating to the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJ QSAC) District Performance Review Process and the Newark Public Schools (NPS) high school graduation rates. The analysis of the accumulated qualitative and quantitative data from this seven-year period was done by disaggregating, coding and comparing the data from each and across these sources. Through the lens of the open-systems theory conceptual framework, the results of the analysis yielded explanations. The explanations are an insight to the causes and effects of the processes during the state takeover that influenced the district’s operations and high school graduation rates. The outcomes subsequently led to the conditional restoration of the Newark Public School’s (NPS) control to the local board of education in 2018.