'Schools are not going to be able to escape'

National | INTERVIEW: Secretary of Education Rod Paige argues that the president's massive hike in education spending will allow Uncle Sam to demand results—and push competition | Joe Maxwell

ALTHOUGH he is a famous native son of Mississippi, scores of inner-city children at a Jackson, Miss., Boys and Girls Club seemingly were unimpressed with Rod Paige's celebrity during a visit last month. Mr. Paige, the first African-American secretary of education, gazed through a gym window at grade-schoolers clamoring for basketballs. Others shot pool behind him.

All around, children passed time after another day of school. But what happened during their school day? This is the question that drives Mr. Paige.

In an interview with WORLD, the nation's education secretary said he is a walking and talking testament to what education can produce. "In the Baptist church where I grew up, they used to sing a song called 'I Am a Testimony,'" Mr. Paige said. "And as I've lived my life, I more and more think about that because I see myself now as a testimony. I am ... a testimony to what caring parents, dedicated to education, can do ... to provide opportunity for a person to come from rural Mississippi—Monticello, Mississippi, specifically—to a place around the table with the cabinet members of the president of the United States."