Everybody Is Somebody at Johnston: The Irony of Integrated Excellence in Austin, Texas

In June 2008, Albert Sidney Johnston High School (JHS) in the Austin Independent School District (AISD) became the first school in the state of Texas to be closed by the Commissioner of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) after receiving ratings of academically unacceptable for five consecutive years under the Texas public school accountability system. Opponents noted that reconstitution was unlikely to solve the school's problems of poverty, low attendance, and high rates of teen pregnancy. The 2008 reconstitution of JHS represented the failure of a school once nationally recognized as a model of integration. In this paper, the authors chronicle the role the school played in AISD's early efforts to address the "Brown v Board of Education" decisions. They focus on the 1970s and 1980s, the period in which it was deemed a "model of desegregation." This historical study is based on data that include (a) books, articles, documents, and letters related to desegregation efforts in general as well as those specific to AISD and JHS; (b) documents reporting the achievement results of JHS; (c) newspaper articles derived from JHS, the city newspaper, and national newspaper outlets; (d) documents related to district-level plans as well as minutes of AISD Board of Trustees meetings; and (e) the JHS annual yearbooks. To advance an understanding of the historical underpinnings pertaining to JHS, the district, and the larger community, we trace how the doormat of the district school became a model of desegregation, only to later return to being a segregated reconstituted school. This full circle of change is the focus of our story.