Rod Paige, an educator, coach and administrator who rolled out the nation\u2019s landmark No Child Left Behind law as the first African American to serve as U.S. education secretary, died Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former President George W. Bush, who tapped Paige for the nation\u2019s top federal education post, announced the death in a statement but did not provide further details. Paige was 92.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under Paige\u2019s leadership, the Department of Education implemented No Child Left Behind policy that in 2002 became Bush\u2019s signature education law and was modeled on Paige\u2019s previous work as a schools superintendent in Houston. The law established universal testing standards and sanctioned schools that failed to meet certain benchmarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cRod was a leader and a friend,\u201d Bush said in his statement. \u201cUnsatisfied with the status quo, he challenged what we called \u2018the soft bigotry of low expectations.\u2019 Rod worked hard to make sure that where a child was born didn\u2019t determine whether they could succeed in school and beyond.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roderick R. Paige was born to two teachers in the small Mississippi town of Monticello of roughly 1,400 inhabitants. The oldest of five siblings, Paige served a two-year stint the U.S. Navy before becoming a football coach at the high school, and then junior college levels. Within years, Paige rose to head coach of Jackson State University, his alma mater and a historically black college in the Mississippi capital city.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There, his team became the first \u2014 with a 1967 football game \u2014 to integrate Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, once an all-white venue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After moving to Houston in the mid-1970s to become head coach of Texas Southern University, Paige pivoted from the playing field to the classroom and education \u2014 first as a teacher, and then as administrator and eventually the dean of its college of education from 1984 to 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amid growing public recognition of his pursuit of educational excellence, Paige rose to become superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, then one of the largest school districts in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He quickly drew the attention of Texas\u2019 most powerful politicians for his sweeping educational reforms in the diverse Texas city. Most notably, he moved to implement stricter metrics for student outcomes, something that became a central point for Bush\u2019s 2000s bid for president. Bush \u2014 who later would dub himself the \u201cEducation President\u201d \u2014 frequently praised Paige on the campaign trail for the Houston reforms he called the \u201cTexas Miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And once Bush won election, he tapped Paige to be the nation\u2019s top education official.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As education secretary from 2001 to 2005, Paige emphasized his belief that high expectations were essential for childhood development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe easiest thing to do is assign them a nice little menial task and pat them on the head,\u201d he told the Washington Post at the time. \u201cAnd that is precisely what we don\u2019t need. We need to assign high expectations to those people, too. In fact, that may be our greatest gift: expecting them to achieve, and then supporting them in their efforts to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While some educators applauded the law for standardizing expectations regardless of student race or income, others complained for years about what they consider a maze of redundant and unnecessary tests and too much \u201cteaching to the test\u201d by educators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2015, House and Senate lawmakers agreed to pull back many provisions from \u201cNo Child Left Behind,\u201d shrinking the Education Department\u2019s role in setting testing standards and preventing the federal agency from sanctioning schools that fail to improve. That year, then-President Barack Obama signed the sweeping education law overhaul, ushering in a new approach to accountability, teacher evaluations and the way the most poorly performing schools are pushed to improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After serving as education secretary, Paige returned to Jackson State University a half century after he was a student there, serving as the interim president in 2016 at the age of 83.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Into his 90s, Paige still publicly expressed deep concern, and optimism, about the future of U.S. education. In an opinion piece appearing in the Houston Chronicle in 2024, Paige lifted up the city that helped propel him to national prominence, urging readers to \u201clook to Houston not just for inspiration, but for hard-won lessons about what works, what doesn\u2019t and what it takes to shake up a stagnant system.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n