Rod Paige, an educator, coach and administrator who rolled out the nation’s landmark No Youngster Left Behind legislation as the primary African American to function U.S. schooling secretary, died Tuesday.
Former President George W. Bush, who tapped Paige for the nation’s high federal schooling put up, introduced the demise in an announcement however didn’t present additional particulars. Paige was 92.
Beneath Paige’s management, the Division of Training applied No Youngster Left Behind coverage that in 2002 grew to become Bush’s signature schooling legislation and was modeled on Paige’s earlier work as a faculties superintendent in Houston. The legislation established common testing requirements and sanctioned faculties that failed to satisfy sure benchmarks.
“Rod was a frontrunner and a buddy,” Bush stated in his assertion. “Unhappy with the established order, he challenged what we referred to as ‘the smooth bigotry of low expectations.’ Rod labored laborious to ensure that the place a toddler was born did not decide whether or not they might reach faculty and past.”
Terry Ashe / AP
Roderick R. Paige was born to 2 lecturers within the small Mississippi city of Monticello of roughly 1,400 inhabitants. The oldest of 5 siblings, Paige served a two-year stint the U.S. Navy earlier than turning into a soccer coach at the highschool, after which junior school ranges. Inside years, Paige rose to go coach of Jackson State College, his alma mater and a traditionally Black school within the Mississippi capital metropolis.
There, his workforce grew to become the primary — with a 1967 soccer recreation — to combine Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, as soon as an all-White venue.
After transferring to Houston within the mid-Seventies to change into head coach of Texas Southern College, Paige pivoted from the enjoying subject to the classroom and schooling — first as a trainer, after which as administrator and ultimately the dean of its school of schooling from 1984 to 1994.
Amid rising public recognition of his pursuit of academic excellence, Paige rose to change into superintendent of the Houston Unbiased College District, then one of many largest faculty districts within the nation.
He shortly drew the eye of Texas’ strongest politicians for his sweeping academic reforms within the various Texas metropolis. Most notably, he moved to implement stricter metrics for pupil outcomes, one thing that grew to become a central level for Bush’s 2000s bid for president. Bush — who later would dub himself the “Training President” — continuously praised Paige on the marketing campaign path for the Houston reforms he referred to as the “Texas Miracle.”
And as soon as Bush received election, he tapped Paige to be the nation’s high schooling official.
As schooling secretary from 2001 to 2005, Paige emphasised his perception that prime expectations had been important for childhood growth.
“The best factor to do is assign them a pleasant little menial process and pat them on the pinnacle,” he advised the Washington Submit on the time. “And that’s exactly what we do not want. We have to assign excessive expectations to these individuals, too. Actually, which may be our biggest present: anticipating them to realize, after which supporting them of their efforts to realize.”
Whereas some educators applauded the legislation for standardizing expectations no matter pupil race or revenue, others complained for years about what they contemplate a maze of redundant and pointless exams and an excessive amount of “educating to the take a look at” by educators.
In 2015, Home and Senate lawmakers agreed to tug again many provisions from “No Youngster Left Behind,” shrinking the Training Division’s function in setting testing requirements and stopping the federal company from sanctioning faculties that fail to enhance. That 12 months, then-President Barack Obama signed the sweeping schooling legislation overhaul, ushering in a brand new method to accountability, trainer evaluations and the best way essentially the most poorly performing faculties are pushed to enhance.
After serving as schooling secretary, Paige returned to Jackson State College a half century after he was a pupil there, serving because the interim president in 2016 on the age of 83.
Into his 90s, Paige nonetheless publicly expressed deep concern, and optimism, about the way forward for U.S. schooling. In an opinion piece showing within the Houston Chronicle in 2024, Paige lifted up town that helped propel him to nationwide prominence, urging readers to “look to Houston not only for inspiration, however for hard-won classes about what works, what would not and what it takes to shake up a stagnant system.”
