Rod Page, the teacher, coach and administrator who introduced the nation’s historic No Child Left Behind law as the first African American to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education, died Tuesday.
Former President George W. Bush, who nominated Page for the nation’s top federal education position, announced the death in a statement, but did not provide further details. Paige was 92.
Under Page’s leadership, the Department of Education implemented the No Child Left Behind policy that in 2002 became Bush’s signature education law and was modeled on Page’s previous work as superintendent of schools in Houston. The law created universal testing standards and imposed penalties on schools that failed to meet certain standards.
“Rodd was a leader and a friend,” Bush said in his statement. “Dissatisfied with the status quo, he challenged what we called ‘the soft intolerance of low expectations.’” Rod worked hard to ensure that where a child is born does not determine whether they can succeed in school and beyond.
Roderick R. was born Paige’s parents are teachers in the small town of Monticello, Mississippi, population about 1,400. The eldest of five siblings, Paige spent two years in the U.S. Navy before becoming a football coach at the high school and then junior college levels. Within years, Paige rose to head coach at Jackson State University, his alma mater and historically black college in Mississippi’s capital.
There, his team became the first — in a 1967 football game — to integrate Mississippi Veterans Stadium, previously an all-white venue.
After moving to Houston in the mid-1970s to become the head coach at Texas Southern University, Paige moved from the field to the classroom and to teaching — first as a teacher, then as principal, and eventually dean of the College of Education from 1984 to 1994.
Amid growing public recognition for his pursuit of educational excellence, Page rose to become superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, then one of the largest school districts in the country.
He quickly caught the attention of the most powerful politicians in Texas for his sweeping educational reforms in the diverse Texas city. In particular, he moved to implement more stringent measures of student outcomes, which became a central point of Bush’s bid for the presidency in the 2000s. Bush—who later called himself the “Education President”—often praised Page during the campaign for the Houston reforms, which he called the “Texas Miracle.”
Once Bush won the closely contested election, he appointed Page to be the nation’s top education official.
As a member of the Bush Cabinet from 2001 to 2005, Page emphasized his belief that high expectations are essential for childhood development.
“The easiest thing you can do is give them a nice menial task and pat them on the head,” he told The Washington Post at the time. “And this is precisely what we don’t need. We need to set high expectations for these people, too. In fact, that may be the greatest gift we have: to expect them to achieve, and then support them in their efforts to achieve.”
While some teachers praised the law for standardizing expectations regardless of students’ race or income, others have complained for years about what they see as a maze of redundant and unnecessary tests and too much “teaching to the test” by teachers.
In 2015, lawmakers in the House and Senate agreed to withdraw several provisions of No Child Left Behind, reducing the Education Department’s role in setting testing standards and preventing the federal agency from imposing penalties on schools that fail to improve. That year, then-President Barack Obama signed comprehensive education law reform, ushering in a new approach to accountability and teacher evaluation and the way underperforming schools are pushed to improve.
After serving as Secretary of Education, Page returned to Jackson State University after a half-century of study there, serving as interim president in 2016 at the age of 83.
In his 90s, Page continued to publicly express his deep concern and optimism about the future of education in the United States. In an op-ed that appeared in the Houston Chronicle in 2024, Page lifted up the city that helped propel him to national prominence, urging readers to “look to Houston not only for inspiration, but also for hard-won lessons about what works, what doesn’t, and what it takes to change a stagnant system.”