Texas gov took heat for prep sports no- pass, no- play rule
Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas — Former Texas Gov. Mark White, a Democrat who championed public education reforms that included the landmark “no- pass, no- play” policy for high school athletes, has died. He was 77.
The former governor, who fought kidney cancer for years, died Saturday in Houston shortly after waking up and feeling uncomfortable, according to his wife, Linda Gale White, and his son Andrew White.
Governor from 1983 until 1987, Mr. White was Texas’ attorney general when he defeated Gov. Bill Clements, Texas’ first Republican governor since Reconstruction who spent a then- record $ 13 million on his re- election campaign. Clements beat Mr. White four years later.
Mr. White’s education reforms included pay raises and competency tests for teachers, class size limits for elementary schools and the creation of the state’s high school basic skills graduation test. Mr. White also pushed through a $ 4 billion tax hike for schools and highways.
In a 2011 interview with The Associated Press, Mr. White said he tried to model his education platform on what his mother, a former first- grade teacher, talked about that she experienced in the classroom.
“It was probably the broadest- based education program in modern U. S. history,” Mr. White said. “I was very proud of what we accomplished.”
Mr. White appointed Dallas billionaire Ross Perot to lead a special panel on education that developed some of the key changes. The no- pass, no- play initiative, which barred students from playing school sports if they were failing a class, was a politically tricky and unpopular move in a state crazy about its high school football. It had to survive a challenge in the state Supreme Court.
Mr. White underestimated the passionate resistance to no- pass, no- play that sparked protests and a few threats of violence.
“It was horrible,” Mr. White said. “I misread the intensity of it until I saw it for myself in West Texas. My security people thought I should go by myself: ‘ Here’s my gun. You go.’”
A state district judge blocked the provision before the state Supreme Court ruled it was a legitimate function of the state’s goal to provide quality education. But Mr. White still had to defend the rule during his losing campaign in 1986.
“Leave it alone,” he implored state lawmakers as he left office in 1987. “Let’s be real: Anyone who can study a playbook can study a textbook. Americans didn’t get to the moon on a quarterback sneak.”
Lawmakers heeded his ad- vice — and no- pass, no play remains the rule in Texas high school sports.
On his inauguration day, Mr. White dramatized his opposition to what he called the “privileged class” by walking a block in a cold rain to the Governor’s Mansion. Once there, he used gold- painted bolt cutters to cut a chain that had been strung across the front gate and shouted “Come on in,” to followers. Several hundred did, forcing Mr. White to stop them at the stairs leading up to the master bedroom.
Mr. White grappled with staggering unemployment on the Mexico border that was blamed on the poor economy, the devaluation of the peso and immigration.
“I learned it’s a lot harder to govern the state when the price of oil drops to $ 9 a barrel,” Mr. White said in 2011.
As governor, Mr. White supported the state’s use of the death penalty. While Texas executed 20 inmates during his administration, Mr. White later said the death penalty was most distasteful thing I had to do” as governor.