Michael Adkison/Houston Public Media
Stephanie Paige, widow of former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, pays tribute to her late husband at his funeral on Dec. 18, 2025.
Former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige was remembered as a staunch advocate for children and their education during his funeral on Thursday in Houston, where he also spent time leading Texas’ largest school district.
“We appreciate your recognition of Secretary Paige,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said. “[He] Impact[ed] every child in America. So yes, we’re celebrating this wonderful life. I’m personally celebrating because he made me a better public official.”
Whitmire issued a proclamation at the funeral, declaring that Dec. 18, 2025, would be “Rod Paige Day.”
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Paige, who died Dec. 9 at 92, was remembered in a funeral service at Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston on Thursday. He will be honored with a ceremony at Mississippi’s Jackson State University, his alma mater, where he also served as interim president from Nov. 2016 to June 2017, on Saturday.
Paige was the first Black secretary of education as well as the first school superintendent to serve in the role. He was appointed at the start of former President George W. Bush’s first administration in 2001. Prior to that, Paige had served as the superintendent of Houston ISD, beginning in 1994.
Funeralgoers honored Paige as someone compassionate about children, who called education access one of the major civil rights issues of the modern era. His peers remembered Paige’s advocacy against the “soft bigotry of lowered expectations.”
“Mr. President [Bush], I have firsthand knowledge that you intimately shared the same passion with my dad for educating our nation’s children,” Paige’s son, Roderick Paige Jr., said.
The Bush family was not in attendance on Thursday. Andrew Card, the former chief of staff to Bush, commemorated Paige as an instrumental figure in passing education policy.
“Rod Paige helped a president do his job and helped him accomplish things that he could not have accomplished without Rod Paige,” Card said. “So, I’m here to say thank you. And the curriculum in every school in America should follow the life of Rod Paige.”
Arne Duncan, who served as secretary of sducation for the majority of Barack Obama’s presidency, called Pagie “a larger-than-life figure.”
“He was stronger than I ever was,” Duncan said. “He may be a better secretary of education. He may be a better man. He personified what public service was about. It was never about him; it was about taking care of others.”
Paige was a central figure in the rise of test-based accountability, a philosophy that transformed how student achievement was measured, how schools were evaluated and how the federal government involved itself in local classrooms.
He is perhaps best known for his work on the No Child Left Behind Act, the sweeping and controversial education law signed in 2002 that expanded standardized testing nationwide and emphasized accountability systems.
Supporters credit Paige with setting high expectations and forcing long-overdue attention on achievement gaps between racial groups. Critics argue the policies he championed relied too heavily on testing, encouraged punitive systems and produced incentives that distorted outcomes.
Houston Public Media’s Bianca Seward contributed to this report.