Marge Goldberg, co-founder of Bloomington nonprofit PACER Center, dies at 90

It wasn’t enough for Marjorie “Marge” Goldberg to fight for the educational needs of a son born with epilepsy and learning disabilities. Her experience helping integrate the Minneapolis schools in the late 1960s and early 1970s also taught her the power of mobilized parents.

In 1976, those lessons led Goldberg to co-found Parent Advocacy Coalition for Educational Rights. Now called PACER Center, the Bloomington nonprofit trains parents of children with disabilities to become their kids’ most effective champions.

That work made Goldberg one of the country’s most influential champions for disability rights, said Norena Hale, former special education director at the Minnesota Department of Education who is writing a history of PACER.

“Marge was the creator of parent development in the state. They created it from scratch,” Hale said. “And she went on to change Minnesota’s education system.”

She added: “I just think she was an amazing woman.”

Goldberg died April 8 after a long fight with cancer. She was 90.

Bob Wedl is a former state education commissioner who, as a former assistant director of special education, worked closely with Goldberg and PACER’s other co-director, Paula Goldberg (no relation), who died in 2022.

Marge Goldberg’s demeanor, Wedl said, made her “incredibly effective” with educators and legislators as they forged the state’s special education laws in the 1970s.

“She didn’t come out as adversarial. She came out saying, ‘Let’s train parents so they know what their rights are,’” he said. “She could be tough. But she wanted to work collaboratively.”

The Department of Education gave PACER its first grant of about $10,000 to train parents to go to schools and advocate for better special education services. PACER representatives were “everywhere,” he said.

“They would be available to go to meetings with schools to advocate,” Wedl said. “Showing up was a big deal. Marge was very bright, and she knew the adversarial approach would just kind of get everybody dug in.”

He continued: “It was just an amazing organization that she and Paula created. And legislators trusted her. That goes a long way.”

Wedl credits PACER for helping develop a couple of major pieces of legislation: The first recognized that special education services need to begin at birth. And the second nodded to the need to help students transition to independent lives after graduation. Examples include schools setting up small apartments so students could work on life skills or teaching students how to use public transportation.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who spoke at Paula Goldberg’s funeral in 2022, said the two co-founders made PACER a national model for helping families of children with disabilities, she said.

“When I speak to national groups, PACER is always recognized as the foremost group in the country,” Klobuchar said in an interview.

The work started with a mom looking out for her son, she added.

“[Marge] knew the school setting would be a challenge to her son [Peter]. She started thinking of his future,” Klobuchar said.

But the work became much more, as the scope broadened and PACER was formed, Klobuchar said.

“I think that she was tenacious. And she was someone who had a vision for something she wanted to do,” Klobuchar said of Marge Goldberg. “In the ′70s, not a lot of women were running things. They were just trying to find people who could advocate for kids in the schools and after.”

“They found something that was a gaping hole, and they filled it,” she added.

Daniel Goldberg, Marge’s son and a local attorney, said his family moved to Minneapolis in 1965 and soon realized that “there was a definite redlining movement in south Minneapolis to segregate white neighborhoods from Black neighborhoods.”

They began to work for change, he said.

His parents became active in the pairing of Field and Hale schools in 1971-72. Field, where he attended, was integrated. Hale was all-white.

“They were always very socially aware people,” said Daniel Goldberg, who currently serves as a PACER executive board member.

His mother’s first experience was as a speech therapist in Charleston, S.C. She was only permitted to go to white-only schools. She left Charleston because of it, he said.

He called his mother “a powerhouse for social change” in her work integrating schools in south Minneapolis in the 1970s and “an incredibly impactful voice for the underserved,” through her work with PACER.

At first, he said, her focus was improving special education laws in Minnesota. Then, he said, she realized that families didn’t know the services they were entitled to.

“It was all about fairness and equality,” he said.

Majorie Goldberg was born in 1934 in New Haven, Conn., the third of four children of Benjamin and Gertrude Vogel. After graduating from high school in 1952, she earned a bachelor’s degree in speech therapy and correction from Emerson College in Boston. After leaving Charleston, she took a job in the Washington D.C., area at a Walter Reed military hospital rehabilitation center.

She met Nelson Goldberg on a blind date and the two married in 1958. In 1962, Daniel was born. In 1963, the couple had Peter, their second son. He was diagnosed at an early age with epilepsy.

Marge Goldberg retired from PACER in 1998 and then traveled extensively, including to Machu Picchu, Australia, New Zealand and Egypt.

She was preceded in death by her husband and is survived by two sons, Daniel and Peter Goldberg, and three grandchildren.