Dive Brief:

• The Arkansas Supreme Court has voted unanimously to uphold the state’s takeover of Little Rock District schools by dismissing a lawsuit against the state brought by the district’s former board.
• The takeover happened in January 2015, when the state's Board of Education dissolved the Little Rock board due to severe under-performance of six district schools. 
• The new decision upends a previous opinion by a Pulaski County judge, who had sided with the district. 

Dive Insight:

In the decision, the court noted that the district’s arguments “are not factual; they are instead largely legal conclusions and speculation,” and went on to say that the state hadn’t acted “arbitrarily, capriciously, in bad faith, or in a wantonly injurious manner in assuming control of the District.”

Members of the former Little Rock District board allege that the state takeover of the schools was a racially motivated attempt to dismantle a majority-black board. The state isn’t out of the woods yet, though — a separate lawsuit filed by third-term State Representative and civil rights lawyer John Walker is also challenging the takeover. That suit is now under consideration by a federal court. In Little Rock, whites comprise a reported 48.1% of the population, while blacks and Hispanics make up 49.1%. 

State takeovers of school districts remain controversial. In Mississippi, failing Tunica County was taken over this past July. In Georgia, an April 2015 proposal legalized takeovers, based on Louisiana’s 2003 "Recovery School District" law that made New Orleans the charter capital of the U.S. In 2012, Tennessee formed an “Achievement School District” to manage Memphis' six worst-performing public schools, and Michigan previously created the Education Achievement Authority to manage 15 failing Detroit schools. In New Jersey, Chris Christie vowed to have the state take over Camden's district, a move that many support.

Critics often say that such takeovers thwart democracy and remove the agency of voters in choosing who runs and manages schools. Additionally, some say the takeovers don’t actually accomplish much. Michael Petrilli, vice president of the Fordham Institute, told The Atlantic that the problem is that the “union contract stays in place, the bureaucracy stays in place…. All that's gone is the school board." Petrilli points to Louisiana’s RSD program as a better option, since it creates, rather than appoints, new district management.