Rod Paige, an educator, coach and administrator who rolled out the nation’s landmark No Baby Left Behind regulation as the primary African American to function U.S. training secretary, died Tuesday.
Former President George W. Bush, who tapped Paige for the nation’s high federal training publish, introduced the demise in an announcement however didn’t present additional particulars. Paige was 92.
Underneath Paige’s management, the Division of Training carried out No Baby Left Behind coverage that in 2002 turned Bush’s signature training 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 satisfy sure benchmarks.
“Rod was a pacesetter and a good friend,” Bush mentioned in his assertion. “Unhappy with the established order, he challenged what we known as ‘the smooth bigotry of low expectations.’ Rod labored onerous to ensure that the place a toddler was born did not decide whether or not they might achieve college 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 changing 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 turned the primary — with a 1967 soccer recreation — to combine Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, as soon as an all-White venue.
After shifting to Houston within the mid-Nineteen Seventies to develop into head coach of Texas Southern College, Paige pivoted from the enjoying area to the classroom and training — first as a trainer, after which as administrator and finally the dean of its school of training from 1984 to 1994.
Amid rising public recognition of his pursuit of instructional excellence, Paige rose to develop into superintendent of the Houston Impartial College District, then one of many largest college districts within the nation.
He rapidly drew the eye of Texas’ strongest politicians for his sweeping instructional reforms within the various Texas metropolis. Most notably, he moved to implement stricter metrics for scholar outcomes, one thing that turned a central level for Bush’s 2000s bid for president. Bush — who later would dub himself the “Training 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 high training official.
As training secretary from 2001 to 2005, Paige emphasised his perception that top expectations have been important for childhood growth.
“The best factor to do is assign them a pleasant little menial activity and pat them on the top,” 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 attain, after which supporting them of their efforts to attain.”
Whereas some educators applauded the regulation for standardizing expectations no matter scholar race or revenue, others complained for years about what they take into account a maze of redundant and pointless checks 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 Baby Left Behind,” shrinking the Training Division’s function in setting testing requirements and stopping the federal company from sanctioning colleges that fail to enhance. That yr, then-President Barack Obama signed the sweeping training regulation overhaul, ushering in a brand new method to accountability, trainer evaluations and the best way probably the most poorly performing colleges are pushed to enhance.
After serving as training secretary, Paige returned to Jackson State College a half century after he was a scholar 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. training. In an opinion piece showing within the Houston Chronicle in 2024, Paige lifted up the 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.”
