Who’s Rod Paige?
He’s President Bush’s Secretary of Education. We’re going to be hearing a lot from him.
Critics say the only compassion they’ve seen from Bush, the compassionate conservative, is his willingness to give billions of dollars in government benefits to those who provided the millions for his campaign.
That’s unfair.
Bush’s emphasis on education is much more than a last-minute tactic to divert the media’s attention from abortion bans, oil drilling in Alaska and tax breaks for the wealthy.
Bush pushed Texas’ education reforms as governor. He helped make education a top political issue during the presidential campaign. It’s his primary focus the first week in office. And he’s given America Roderick Paige.
President Lyndon Johnson used to say, “It’s not doing what’s right that’s difficult. It’s knowing what’s right.” Political courage isn’t enough. The answers aren’t always clear.
The challenge is reversed in public education.
There are, literally, millions of government and academic studies supported with tons of data. They cover virtually every aspect of K-12 education from early childhood to high school dropout rates, accounting practices to Web design, math to reading, parental involvement to board-superintendent relations.
We know what works. In fact, there’s even a report with that title.
When I was an inexperienced, 29-year-old U.S. Maritime Administrator, I asked some friends at the Harvard Business School for help. They sent me a box of books with a handwritten note: “Read these books and do what they say.” I did.
The challenge confronting K-12 education is to get folks to read the books and do what they say.
Rod Paige has done both.
He was born in Mississippi. His parents were public school educators. He earned a doctorate from Indiana, coached college football, was dean of the College of Education at Texas Southern, and served on the Houston School Board before becoming superintendent.
His is a district with 210,000 students, 71 percent of whom are low income.
How has he cut dropout rates by half while increasing test scores by 20 percent?
He’s not only read the books, he wrote the plan the Houston Independent School District’s now carrying out. His measurable ends policies and evaluation techniques are working. It’s a textbook district. He’s followed the formula: research the Internet for best practices and then put them in place.
In one year alone he cut $4 million from his central administration budget and raised teachers’ salaries 11.7 percent. He believes in distributive decision making – and holding buildings accountable for results.
His genius has been the ability to get the diverse sprawl called Houston to go along. As a one-time Houston resident myself, I know that’s not easy.
“One purpose, many partners,” he calls it.
Education Week called Paige a “self-effacing catalyst.”
Dr. Paige recognizes that many Houstonians have a choice of schools. Instead of fighting those private choices he offers more: magnet schools, charter schools, space-available choice schools. There’s even an online “virtual school” – one Houston makes available to students in smaller districts.
Bush’s promised “vouchers”? “Not a priority,” Paige told senators.
He defines the district’s strategic intent: “To earn so much respect from the citizens of Houston that HISD becomes their K-12 educational system of choice.”
How will he do in Washington, and for how long?
Nicholas Johnson is an Iowa City School Board member. More information is available on his Web site www.nicholasjohnson.org.