Rod Paige, an educator, trainer and administrator who rolled out the country’s landmark No Kid Left In the back of regulation as the primary African American to function U.S. schooling secretary, died Tuesday.
Former President George W. Bush, who tapped Paige for the country’s most sensible federal schooling put up, introduced the dying in a observation however didn’t supply additional main points. Paige used to be 92.
Below Paige’s management, the Division of Schooling applied No Kid Left In the back of coverage that during 2002 was Bush’s signature schooling regulation and used to be modeled on Paige’s earlier paintings as a faculties superintendent in Houston. The regulation established common trying out requirements and sanctioned faculties that failed to satisfy positive benchmarks.
“Rod used to be a pacesetter and a chum,” Bush mentioned in his observation. “Unhappy with the established order, he challenged what we referred to as ‘the cushy bigotry of low expectancies.’ Rod labored tough to ensure that the place a kid used to be born did not decide whether or not they might reach college and past.”
Terry Ashe / AP 
Roderick R. Paige used to be born to 2 academics within the small Mississippi the city of Monticello of more or less 1,400 population. The oldest of 5 siblings, Paige served a two-year stint the U.S. Army prior to changing into a soccer trainer at the highschool, after which junior school ranges. Inside years, Paige rose to go trainer of Jackson State College, his alma mater and a traditionally black school within the Mississippi capital town.
There, his group was 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 turn out to be head trainer of Texas Southern College, Paige pivoted from the enjoying box to the study room and schooling — first as a trainer, after which as administrator and sooner or later the dean of its school of schooling from 1984 to 1994.
Amid rising public reputation of his pursuit of tutorial excellence, Paige rose to turn out to be superintendent of the Houston Unbiased Faculty District, then one of the most biggest college districts within the nation.
He briefly drew the eye of Texas’ maximum tough politicians for his sweeping tutorial reforms within the various Texas town. Maximum particularly, he moved to enforce stricter metrics for pupil results, one thing that was a central level for Bush’s 2000s bid for president. Bush — who later would dub himself the “Schooling President” — continuously praised Paige at the marketing campaign path for the Houston reforms he referred to as the “Texas Miracle.”
And as soon as Bush gained election, he tapped Paige to be the country’s most sensible schooling professional.
As schooling secretary from 2001 to 2005, Paige emphasised his trust that prime expectancies have been crucial for adolescence building.
“The perfect factor to do is assign them a pleasant little menial job and pat them at the head,” he advised the Washington Publish on the time. “And that’s exactly what we are not looking for. We wish to assign top expectancies to these other people, too. Actually, that can be our best present: anticipating them to succeed in, after which supporting them of their efforts to succeed in.”
Whilst some educators applauded the regulation for standardizing expectancies irrespective of pupil race or source of revenue, others complained for years about what they imagine a maze of redundant and pointless checks and an excessive amount of “educating to the take a look at” via educators.
In 2015, Area and Senate lawmakers agreed to tug again many provisions from “No Kid Left In the back of,” shrinking the Schooling Division’s function in surroundings trying out requirements and fighting the federal company from sanctioning faculties that fail to toughen. That 12 months, then-President Barack Obama signed the sweeping schooling regulation overhaul, ushering in a brand new technique to duty, trainer reviews and the way in which essentially the most poorly appearing faculties are driven to toughen.
After serving as schooling secretary, Paige returned to Jackson State College a part century after he used to be a pupil there, serving because the intervening time president in 2016 on the age of 83.
Into his 90s, Paige nonetheless publicly expressed deep fear, 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 “glance to Houston no longer only for inspiration, however for hard-won classes about what works, what does not and what it takes to shake up a stagnant machine.”
