PACE ASSN. (Plan [or Program] for Action by Citizens in Education) was a local citizens' group that worked to help improve the quality of education and to promote better race relations in the schools in the Greater Cleveland area between 1963 and early 1974. It stemmed from a committee appointed by the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation in 1962 to survey the "unmet needs" of public, private, and parochial elementary and secondary schools in Cuyahoga County and to develop a plan to meet those needs. Chaired by attorney Hugh Calkins, the PACE Committee issued a report in Apr. 1963 noting such problems as inadequate finances and other resources to meet educational needs and a lack of community support for the schools. One of the committee's 26 recommendations was for the creation of a citizens' group to provide political support, civic leadership, and needed resources to local school systems. Calkins accordingly took the lead in organizing the PACE Assn. on 17 Sept. 1963 with the help of a grant from the Greater Cleveland Associated Foundation. Under the leadership of Robt. B. Binswanger, executive director from 1963 to mid-1966, PACE took the lead in establishing and financing school libraries, operating preschool programs, beginning a Summer Tutor Corps, and launching a program to combat adult illiteracy. By Oct. 1965 its efforts involved 20,000 volunteers. By the early 1970s, however, PACE was working mostly with suburban schools because of what some observers saw as a lack of cooperation from Cleveland school administrators. Unable to find financial support to continue its work, the association ceased to operate in early 1974.
Finding aid for the PACE Records, WRHS.
Gorn, Cathy. Achieving "Comfortableness": Private Action and Public Education Policy in Cleveland, 1962-1974 (Ph.D. thesis, CWRU, 1992).