Joseph Johnson

Equity Research Advisory Board Chair

Joseph Johnson is the Founding Executive Director of the National Center for Urban School Transformation (NCUST) at San Diego State University. NCUST identifies, studies and promotes the best practices of high-performing urban schools and districts throughout the nation. They award and study those schools and then help other schools pursue courses of action that lead to similar equitable and excellent results. While at NCUST, Johnson served as a Professor of Educational Leadership at SDSU, then as the Dean of the College of Education and finally as the University’s Provost and Senior Vice President. In 2019, he retired from university administration to focus exclusively on NCUST. Prior to coming to San Diego State, he served as a teacher in southeast San Diego, California; as a school and district administrator in New Mexico; as a state department official in both Texas and Ohio; as a researcher at the University of Texas and as a Senior Executive Service Director at the US Department of Education, where he led the nation’s largest federal elementary and secondary education programs. He earned a PhD in Educational Administration from the University of Texas, an MA at San Diego State University and a BS from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He has received outstanding educator awards in both New Mexico and Texas and published multiple articles, book chapters, reports and books.