By Safiyah RiddleAP Information
Dr. Rod Paige, an educator, coach and administrator who rolled out the nation’s landmark No Little one Left Behind legislation as the primary African American to function U.S. training secretary, died Dec. 9.
Former President George W. Bush, who tapped Paige for the nation’s prime federal training put up, introduced the demise in a press release however didn’t present additional particulars. Paige was 92.
Beneath Paige’s management, the Division of Training applied No Little one Left Behind coverage that in 2002 turned Bush’s signature training legislation and was modeled on Paige’s earlier work as a colleges superintendent in Houston. The legislation established common testing requirements and sanctioned colleges 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 comfortable bigotry of low expectations.’ Rod labored exhausting to guarantee that the place a toddler was born didn’t decide whether or not they might reach faculty 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 group turned the primary — with a 1967 soccer sport — to combine Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, as soon as an all-white venue.
After shifting to Houston within the mid-Nineteen Seventies to grow to be head coach of Texas Southern College, Paige pivoted from the taking part in subject to the classroom and training — first as a trainer, after which as administrator and ultimately the dean of its school of training from 1984 to 1994.
Amid rising public recognition of his pursuit of academic excellence, Paige rose to grow to be superintendent of the Houston Unbiased Faculty District, then one of many largest faculty districts within the nation.
He rapidly 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 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” — regularly praised Paige on 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 nation’s prime training official.
As training secretary from 2001 to 2005, Paige emphasised his perception that prime expectations had been important for childhood improvement.
“The simplest factor to do is assign them a pleasant little menial activity and pat them on the top,” he advised the Washington Put up on the time. “And that’s exactly what we don’t want. We have to assign excessive expectations to these folks, too. The truth is, which may be our best reward: anticipating them to realize, after which supporting them of their efforts to realize.”
Whereas some educators applauded the legislation for standardizing expectations no matter scholar race or earnings, others complained for years about what they take into account a maze of redundant and pointless assessments and an excessive amount of “instructing to the take a look at” by educators.
In 2015, Home and Senate lawmakers agreed to drag again many provisions from “No Little one 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 legislation overhaul, ushering in a brand new strategy to accountability, trainer evaluations and the way in which essentially 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 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 doesn’t and what it takes to shake up a stagnant system.”
