By JR Robinson, CEO/Co-Founder, JustMyMemphis

Immediately, the partisan playbooks opened up. Local leaders and Democrats are filing federal lawsuits, screaming that a white, Republican supermajority in Nashville is stripping power from a majority-Black, Democratic county. They point to past state failures like the Achievement School District (ASD) to say, "See? The state can't fix this."

But flip the script and look at the raw facts. Over 74% of MSCS students cannot read at grade level, and nearly 78% are failing to meet basic math expectations. In sixth-grade math, the passing rate is a devastating 15.7%. We’ve burned through four superintendents in five years, and a massive state forensic audit is digging into systemic financial mismanagement.

The new oversight board isn't a shadowy group of out-of-towners; it’s composed of respected Memphis leaders like former superintendent Dorsey Hopson and former board chair Billy Orgel. So ask yourself the hard question: Why are we more upset at the "White Man" in Nashville trying to intervene than we are at the local establishment that has turned its back on our kids for a generation? If our comforting racial defense mechanisms are shielding a broken system, we aren't protecting Black power—we are subsidizing childhood failure.

• The Literacy Crisis: Overall reading proficiency across MSCS sits at 25.7%. That means roughly 74.3% of our children cannot read at grade level. Meanwhile, the state average sits near 45%.
• The Math Disaster: Overall math proficiency is at 22.3%. Nearly 78% of our kids are failing math.
• The Middle School Black Hole: Among MSCS sixth graders, math proficiency dropped a staggering 4 percentage points this year down to 15.7%. Out of every 100 sixth graders in that classroom, 84 cannot do basic sixth-grade math.
• Administrative Whiplash: A healthy organizational culture requires stability. MSCS has had four superintendents in the last five years. The local school board abruptly fired Superintendent Marie Feagins in January 2025, throwing the district into yet another leadership vacuum while a state-funded forensic audit continues to probe deep internal financial mismanagement.

• Billy Orgel (Chair): The former MSCS school board chair who knows the district's structural operations inside and out.
• Dorsey Hopson: The former MSCS superintendent who successfully navigated the massive Memphis City and Shelby County school merger.
• Beverly Robertson: The former President and CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce.
• Karen Vogelsang: A former Memphis teacher and the 2014 Tennessee Teacher of the Year who runs a local literacy nonprofit.
• Dedrick Brittenum Jr.: A Memphis lawyer and former city councilman.

Why are we more outraged by the racial makeup of the state legislature than we are by a 15.7% math proficiency rate for our sixth graders?

1. Demand Local Cooperation, Not Costly Litigation: The Shelby County Commission needs to stop funding lawsuits that seek to paralyze the oversight board. Every dollar spent on high-priced defense attorneys is a dollar stripped from classroom intervention.
2. Hold the New Oversight Board to a Transparent Metric: Since the state argued that "stagnant academic performance" justified this intervention, we must hold this new board strictly to that standard. If reading proficiency doesn’t climb significantly over their four-year term, they must face the exact same scrutiny.
3. Refuse the Generational Deflection: The next time a local politician stands at a podium and tries to make a school governance issue strictly about race or partisan lines, look at them and ask: "What is the literacy rate in your district?" If your political beliefs require you to defend a broken system just because the people running it look like you or share your party alignment, then your politics are holding Memphis back.