Rod Paige, who was President George W. Bush’s first secretary of education but who left amid a series of controversies that included attacks on foes of the No Child Left Behind law, died in Houston on Tuesday. He was 92.

His family announced his death in a statement, which did not specify a cause.

A former school superintendent in Houston, Paige arrived in Washington with little political experience but with a reputation as a champion of urban education. He was the nation’s first Black secretary of education, the first actual educator to lead the department and a symbolic star of the administration’s “compassionate conservatism.”

He quickly embraced Bush’s top legislative priority, the No Child Left Behind Act, which called for national changes in public education, including standardize

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