NEWARK, N.J. -- Ten years ago, New Jersey officials decided they were tired of watching from the sideline as Jersey City school and city officials seemed more concerned with providing jobs for friends than with falling student test scores. So state officials took charge of the system, kicking out the superintendent and school board members.

A decade into state control, attendance is up slightly in Jersey City schools and test scores have improved, but there has been no drastic turnaround in student performance. And the state is seen by many residents as little more than an occupying force.

The Department of Education is now running the state's three largest school districts, yet state officials are still without a plan to return the schools to local control, a detail that was not addressed in the legislation that gave the state authority to take over schools. And even those New Jersey officials involved with the original takeover in 1989 now acknowledge that the state was armed with more good intentions than practical strategy.

'A vague assumption'

"There was a vague assumption on our part that if we fixed the central office, and replaced the people who were there with good people, those good people would solve the problems of urban education," said Leo Klagholz, New Jersey's commissioner of education, who was the head of teacher certification for the state in 1989. "It turns out to be not that simple."

New Jersey was the first state to take over a school system after deciding that it was inept and corrupt. Twenty-one other states, including Maryland, have followed suit, but having seen New Jersey's model at work, they are shying away from taking control of all day-to-day operations. Instead, those states favor takeovers that give local mayors control of the school systems.

Recently, for example, Michigan moved to require Detroit's mayor to take over that school system. But while other states have traveled a different road, New Jersey officials still defend their all-or-nothing approach.

The state's record on its three takeovers Jersey City, Newark (in 1995) and Paterson (in 1991) was debated again in February after Beverly Hall, the state-appointed head of Newark's schools, announced she would leave to head Atlanta's schools.

Hall, Newark's only superintendent since the state takeover in 1995, had faced tremendous resistance from the teachers union, local residents and elected officials. And four years later, critics say the district's academic achievement has not met the state's own benchmarks.

Some improvements

Yet there have been improvements. In 1993, before the state took over, only about a quarter of Newark's 11th-graders passed the statewide High School Proficiency Test. Last year, 50 percent passed the math portion of the test, 61.9 percent passed the writing portion and 63.3 percent passed the reading portion, though the results fell short of the state's own target of 85 percent.

In an interview, Hall said she did not believe a takeover was the best way to fix a troubled school system, because local residents and officials did not feel they had much opportunity to affect decisions and therefore might not support changes.

"But when children's lives are at stake and I think education is that important when they are failing so drastically, then drastic actions are required," she said. "You have almost an obligation to take them over."

But some dispute whether a state must run the district itself to see results. Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools in Washington, a coalition of the country's 54 largest districts, said other states had learned that taking power from local officials was not the best way to make academic gains.

"Most states have resisted using that tool," he said. "They don't know what to do. Who in Albany knows what to do in New York City? If they knew what to do, I assume they would have told us by now."

Casserly said that other states had left control in the hands of local officials, usually the mayor. Supporters of this model point to Chicago, where the mayor was given control of the schools by the state Legislature in 1995. Test scores there improved enough to be cited by President Clinton in his State of the Union speech in January.

New Jersey can certainly claim victory in some areas. Political corruption and mismanagement in the takeover districts have been eradicated by most accounts, and neglected buildings have been spruced up.

But takeovers are not popular. Resentment over the state-appointed head of Jersey City's schools contributed to a bitter five-day teachers strike there last fall. And in Newark recently, Mayor Sharpe James had stinging words for Hall, accusing her of being a carpetbagger and alienating local residents.

And New Jersey's takeovers have not resulted in quick, drastic academic gains.

In Jersey City, for example, the overall attendance rate was 89.1 percent in 1989, when the state took control; last year it was 91.4 percent. Although standardized tests have changed since the takeover, in 1993-1994, the first year the High School Proficiency Test was given, 66.4 percent of 11th graders passed the math portion; last year, 69.8 percent passed.

"State takeover in New Jersey is like Vietnam," said Gregg Butterfield, the president of Jersey City's Board of Education, which is now locally elected but with restricted powers. "The state doesn't know how to get out."

In New York, state officials took over one district, Roosevelt on Long Island in 1996, but then changed their strategy, said Richard Mills, the state's commissioner of education. Instead of complete takeovers, the state now places troubled schools on a list of "Schools Under Registration Review," and tells them they must show improvement in three years or risk being shut down. But it leaves the decision-making in the hands of local officials.

'Pressure and support'

"We try to accomplish reform through a combination of pressure and support," Mills said. "It seems to us there's great strength and leadership in some of these cities, and you need to back these leaders."

New York officials have shown they mean business. Six schools have been shut down in four years, while 63 have come off the list because they showed improvement. About 100 schools new are on the list, Mills said, most of them in New York City.

To see what worked, the Educational Priorities Panel, a state-appointed group, studied 10 failing schools in New York that had shown significant improvement. In all cases, they said, the schools had strong principals and staffs whose first mission was to improve student achievement.

What the report did not find was a link between the school's physical condition and the student performance. Complaints about crowded classrooms and graffiti on school walls were legitimate topics for debate, the panel found, but missed the real point of what made schools work.

"Buildings should be in a state of good repair simply because children deserve a decent learning environment," the report stated. "Yet the repair of a leaking roof or the plumbing will not lead to the mastery of mathematics."

But in New Jersey, officials say that the poor state of repairs was one indication that an entire school system was not working. Jack Ewing, a former New Jersey state senator who sponsored the takeover legislation, said that at one school in Jersey City, maintenance money was so mismanaged that students had to climb four flights of stairs to go to the bathroom.

Mayor's view

And Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, no fan of the takeover, said that corruption was never all that widespread to begin with.

"Some purchasing agents went to jail for selling electronic equipment the district was buying," said the mayor, who was not in office when the state came in.

"That is absolutely outrageous that they were doing that. But how much was being stolen? Maybe tens of thousands of dollars. The district's budget is about $80 million. That's not why half the kids were not making it to the 12th grade."