WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Rod Paige is leaving his post – the third Cabinet member to resign since President Bush won re-election.
Paige, 71, a champion of the administration’s groundbreaking No Child Left Behind reform law who caught flak for comparing a teachers union to a terrorist group and for fumbling over grammar, has long been eyeing an out, a White House official said yesterday.
Paige, the former head of the Houston Independent School District, left Houston to become the nation’s first black education secretary.
Paige intends to follow Attorney General John Ashcroft and Commerce Secretary Don Evans out the door.