Rod Paige, a Mississippi native, lifetime educator and the first Black person to serve as U.S. education secretary, died Tuesday at his home in Texas.

His family announced his death in a statement but did not share the cause. Paige was 92.

Paige’s career in education spanned departments and titles, from teacher to football coach to superintendent of the Houston Independent School District in Texas. In 2001, President George W. Bush tapped Paige to serve as the seventh secretary of education.

Over the next four years, Paige led the rollout of Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated standardized testing and sanctions for schools that failed to meet benchmarks, aiming to close the academic gap between students from different backgrounds. The policy was modeled on Paige’s

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