Rod Paige, former schooling secretary and architect of No Little one Left Behind coverage, dies at 92

Rod Paige, an educator, coach and administrator who rolled out the nation’s landmark No Little one Left Behind regulation 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 prime federal schooling put up, introduced the dying in a press release however didn’t present additional particulars. Paige was 92.

Beneath Paige’s management, the Division of Schooling carried out No Little one Left Behind coverage that in 2002 turned Bush’s signature schooling regulation and was modeled on Paige’s earlier work as a colleges superintendent in Houston. The regulation established common testing requirements and sanctioned colleges that failed to fulfill sure benchmarks.

“Rod was a frontrunner and a good friend,” Bush mentioned in his assertion. “Unhappy with the established order, he challenged what we known as ‘the comfortable bigotry of low expectations.’ Rod labored onerous to be sure that the place a baby was born did not decide whether or not they might reach college and past.”

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 changing into a soccer coach at the highschool, after which junior school ranges. Inside years, Paige rose to move coach of Jackson State College, his alma mater and a traditionally Black school within the Mississippi capital metropolis.

There, his workforce turned 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 develop into head coach of Texas Southern College, Paige pivoted from the enjoying subject to the classroom and schooling — first as a instructor, 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 develop into superintendent of the Houston Impartial College District, then one of many largest college 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 turned a central level for Bush’s 2000s bid for president. Bush — who later would dub himself the “Schooling President” — steadily praised Paige on the marketing campaign path for the Houston reforms he known as the “Texas Miracle.”

And as soon as Bush gained election, he tapped Paige to be the nation’s prime schooling official.

As schooling secretary from 2001 to 2005, Paige emphasised his perception that top expectations have been important for childhood growth.

“The simplest factor to do is assign them a pleasant little menial activity and pat them on the top,” he instructed the Washington Put up on the time. “And that’s exactly what we do not want. We have to assign excessive expectations to these individuals, too. In truth, which may be our biggest reward: anticipating them to realize, after which supporting them of their efforts to realize.”

Whereas some educators applauded the regulation for standardizing expectations no matter pupil race or revenue, others complained for years about what they contemplate a maze of redundant and pointless assessments and an excessive amount of “educating to the check” by educators.

In 2015, Home and Senate lawmakers agreed to tug again many provisions from “No Little one Left Behind,” shrinking the Schooling Division’s position in setting testing requirements and stopping the federal company from sanctioning colleges that fail to enhance. That 12 months, then-President Barack Obama signed the sweeping schooling regulation overhaul, ushering in a brand new method to accountability, instructor evaluations and the way in which essentially the most poorly performing colleges 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 does not and what it takes to shake up a stagnant system.”