Ruth Schwartz Pearce; Child Development Leader

Ruth Schwartz Pearce, 72, founding president of the Assn. of Child Development Specialists. Mrs. Pearce began her career in Los Angeles-area cooperative nursery schools and in 1958 was hired by Cedars-Sinai Medical Center as founding director of its Therapeutic Nursery School for children with emotional problems. When Head Start began in the mid-1960s, she trained some of the program’s first teachers in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mrs. Pearce moved to the Dubnoff School in North Hollywood to direct a child development program there. She later worked as a private consultant to several schools and taught child development at UCLA, Cal State Northridge and Pacific Oaks College and Children’s School in Pasadena. After founding the association in 1983, she also created its therapeutic companion program, in which a trained adult helps a child with mental or emotional problems attend mainstream schools. On Friday in Pacific Palisades of cancer.