Rod Paige, First African American U.S. Education Secretary, Dies at 92

Rod Paige, the first African American to serve as U.S. education secretary and the architect of the No Child Left Behind law, died Tuesday at age 92.

A Legacy in Education

Former President George W. Bush announced Paige’s death in a statement that offered praise but withheld further details. Bush said, “Rod was a leader and a friend,” adding, “Unsatisfied with the status quo, he challenged what we called ‘the soft bigotry of low expectations.’ Rod worked hard to make sure that where a child was born didn’t determine whether they could succeed in school and beyond.” The former secretary’s passing marks the end of a career that reshaped American schooling.

From Coach to Superintendent

Paige was born in the small Mississippi town of Monticello to two teachers and was the oldest of five siblings. After a two‑year stint in the U.S. Navy, he became a football coach at the high school and junior college levels. He rose to head coach of his alma mater, Jackson State University, a historically black college in the state’s capital. In 1967, his team became the first to integrate Mississippi Veterans Memorial Stadium, once an all‑white venue.

In the mid‑1970s Paige moved to Houston to coach at Texas Southern University. He later shifted from the field to the classroom, becoming a teacher, administrator, and eventually dean of the college of education from 1984 to 1994. His leadership in education grew when he was appointed superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, one of the country’s largest districts.

The No Child Left Behind Era

Paige’s work in Houston drew the attention of Texas’s most powerful politicians. He introduced stricter metrics for student outcomes, a strategy that became central to President Bush’s 2000s campaign. Bush, who dubbed himself the “Education President,” praised Paige’s reforms as the “Texas Miracle.” When Bush won the presidency, he tapped Paige to serve as the nation’s top education official from 2001 to 2005.

During that tenure, Paige emphasized that high expectations were essential for childhood development. He told the Washington Post, “The easiest thing to do is assign them a nice little menial task and pat them on the head,” he told the Washington Post at the time. “And that is precisely what we don’t 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.”

Paige’s leadership helped shape the No Child Left Behind law, which became President Bush’s signature education law in 2002. The policy established universal testing standards and sanctioned schools that failed to meet certain benchmarks. It was modeled on Paige’s previous work as a schools superintendent in Houston.

Reactions and Revisions

While some educators applauded the law for standardizing expectations regardless of student race or income, others complained for years about a maze of redundant and unnecessary tests and too much “teaching to the test” by educators. In 2015, House and Senate lawmakers agreed to pull back many provisions from No Child Left Behind, shrinking the Department of Education’s 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.

Later Years and Final Reflections

After serving as education secretary, Paige returned to Jackson State University a half‑century after he was a student there. He served as the interim president in 2016 at the age of 83. 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, he lifted up the city that helped propel him to national prominence, urging readers to “look to Houston not just for inspiration, but for hard‑won lessons about what works, what doesn’t and what it takes to shake up a stagnant system.”

Key Takeaways

• Rod Paige was the first African American to serve as U.S. education secretary and a driving force behind No Child Left Behind.
• His career spanned coaching, school administration, and federal policy, with a focus on high expectations for all students.
• The 2015 reforms and Obama’s overhaul marked a significant shift away from the original law’s stringent testing and sanctioning framework.

The death of Rod Paige marks the passing of a pivotal figure in American education, whose legacy continues to influence debates on accountability, equity, and the role of federal policy in schools.