Indeed, test scores and other metrics barely budged for years. Newark’s first state-appointed superintendent, Beverly Hall, a former New York City education official, clashed with parents and educators, and left the district in 1999 with a staggering deficit amid questions of fiscal mismanagement. Later, as superintendent of the Atlanta schools, she was indicted in a widespread cheating scandal, but died in 2015 awaiting trial.

Just as polarizing, if not more so, was Cami Anderson, a veteran of the New York City schools under former chancellor Joel I. Klein who was appointed by Gov. Chris Christie in 2011. Her plan to reorganize the schools, which included closing low-performing ones and opening many charter schools, and creating an open enrollment system that did away with some neighborhood schools, played a role in the fractious 2014 Newark mayor’s race won by Ras J. Baraka, a former teacher and high school principal. She resigned the next year.

In 2015, Governor Christie tapped Christopher D. Cerf, a hard-charging former state education commissioner and yet another disciple of Mr. Klein’s, as the next superintendent. In an interview at City Hall, Mr. Baraka said that he had expected the latest outsider to be “very rigid” and “carry the governor’s water.”

But the two men instead forged an unexpectedly productive relationship. A new teachers’ union contract, signed in May, featured little of the rancor from years past, and Mr. Baraka has helped to defuse tensions between charter and traditional schools. Charter enrollment has tripled in the past five years and Ms. Anderson’s much maligned open enrollment plan has been modified with more community input.

In the interview Mr. Baraka credited Mr. Cerf for being open-minded. “Sometimes you go to a church to infiltrate, and become a deacon,” he said.