University to Receive $7-Million Eisner Gift

The family foundation of Michael D. Eisner, the chairman and chief executive of Walt Disney Co., today will announce a $7-million gift to Cal State Northridge to establish a national center there for preparing teachers to cope with the vast learning differences among their students.

The money, to be given over five years, represents the largest gift ever received by the campus. It will be used to infuse into classes for prospective teachers the philosophy of Dr. Mel Levine, a pioneering pediatrician whose North Carolina clinic for diagnosing learning difficulties draws children from around the globe.

In Eisner’s honor, the university intends to recommend to the CSU Board of Trustees that Northridge’s college of education be named the Michael D. Eisner School of Education.

Eisner, whose company was built on firing the imaginations of youngsters, said Levine’s theory that all children’s minds work differently is common-sensical. Yet, he said, Levine’s approach has an almost magical power to explain why some children struggle within the orderly confines of classrooms. Children who, for example, have to be moving to concentrate or who have trouble listening and writing simultaneously often are misunderstood and humiliated.

“To be humiliated because your mind is wired slightly differently and the teacher doesn’t understand that or hasn’t been taught that, to me is destroying a human being, and it’s like child abuse,” Eisner said. “Teachers recognizing the problem is half the solution.”

Levine’s work draws on more than 20 years as a clinician as well as the work of cognitive scientists. He said that every person has a neuro-developmental profile that combines strengths and weaknesses. One student might have memory deficits that make rapid recall impossible; another might memorize words to compensate for reading difficulties. But schools, especially these days, are being pressured to reduce every child to test scores.

“Testing should be used to figure out who we need to help and how we’re going to help,” Levine said. “We have to be careful so that we’re not discriminating against kids and trampling on certain kinds of minds by the nature of the test.”

The gift from the Eisner Foundation will be used to set up the Center for Teaching and Learning. In addition to its work with prospective teachers, the center will offer training to instructors already on the job and will house a student assessment center where parents whose children experience learning difficulties can come for help. The gift also will pay for research to evaluate the effectiveness of Levine’s approach.

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Cal State Northridge Gaining More Notice

Last year nearly 900 graduates of Cal State Northridge’s education school obtained teaching credentials, the most of any public university in the state. Yet, until recently, the university had gained little notice beyond the San Fernando Valley.

In addition to the donation from Eisner, Cal State Northridge recently was one of four education schools in the nation to win $5-million matching grants from the Carnegie Corp. The four schools--including the University of Virginia, Michigan State University and Bank Street College of Education in New York--will redesign how teachers are prepared.

Coming so close together, the gift and grant are “a wonderful confirmation of our excellence,” said Cal State Northridge President Jolene Koester. “We believe it gives us national exposure and prestige and, while we’ll continue to serve the region, it’ll allow us to have a national impact.”

Levine was recently featured on ABC’s “Oprah” show, in a PBS documentary and on NBC, all of which helped vault his new book, “A Mind at a Time,” onto the New York Times Book Review’s bestseller list. ABC is owned by Disney.

Eisner and his wife Jane, who is president of the family foundation, said they do not have personal experience with the often devastating effects of learning struggles. But in a joint interview each said they had come to realize that millions of people are affected. “I haven’t met a person who doesn’t relate to this in some way,” Jane Eisner said. “It’s just extraordinary.”

Michael Eisner said that in his 30 years in television and movies he’d often told stories about classrooms, including television series such as “Welcome Back, Kotter,” “Room 222” and the movie “Dangerous Minds.” And in all, he said, “you always put in the screw-up kid” for comic relief.

Jane Eisner said Cal State Northridge representatives approached the foundation with the plan to introduce Levine’s work. The foundation previously donated $1 million to the Etta Israel Center to train teachers in Levine’s “Schools Attuned” methods. As part of that grant, she met professor Michael Spagna, who will head the new Cal State Northridge center.

Spagna said prospective teachers at most universities, including Cal State Northridge, are required to take a class in special education, which teaches them to look for symptoms of learning disabilities and to label those who don’t fit in.

He said Levine’s ideas are “extremely radical” because while teachers “are taught to be sensitive to the needs of individuals” they are taught to be “even more sensitive to the needs of the whole class.”

Schools where teachers have been trained in Levine’s approach report that they see fewer discipline problems, fewer children are held back, and fewer children wind up in special education.

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Levine’s Approach Making Inroads

Nationally, more than 9,000 teachers have received the “Schools Attuned” training. But, until the association with Cal State Northridge, Levine’s approach hadn’t gained a foothold in schools of education.

“It’s partly that the world of academia is very territorial and the idea of a pediatrician moving into education is not welcomed by people in education,” Levine said.

Levine was a Rhodes scholar and then attended medical school at Harvard. During duty in the Philippines with the U.S. Air Force, Levine became interested in the intricacies of how children learn. Back in Boston, he was a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston. While there, he helped write the special education law for Massachusetts.