LearningRX Complaints: Falsified Test Results.
(UnhappyFranchisee.com) According to the LearningRx franchise website: “LearningRx is one of the top educational and child franchises in the nation. We change lives every day through the incredible power of brain training! Our programs are designed to target weak cognitive skills and help anyone from age 4 to 94 to achieve guaranteed results.”
LearningRx franchise centers promise guaranteed results for children and adults with ADD, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, reading problems, learning disabilities and other challenges.
LearningRX programs are pricey, often costing $5000 – $15,000. However, part of the LearningRX sales pitch is that they guarantee results – or your money back. However, some former LearningRX employees have claimed that their LearningRX franchise either put undue pressure (and financial incentives) on testers to do whatever it takes produce positive test results – and thereby avoid a refund.
Others claimed they were blatantly instructed to falsify test scores to exaggerate the effect of their program.
Are you familiar with the LearningRX franchise? Please share a comment below.
Some allege that some LearningRX franchise locations intentionally falsify test results to show bogus improvement – and avoid paying refunds.
thetruthbetold wrote:
I worked for learningRx in a management position and as a trainer… i witnessed test scores being changed to persuade parents to sign up or continue after completion… It is grossly overcharged without a flat rate so each family pays what the owners can get out of them! …its not the program itself that’s a problem it is the fact that now franchisees can open up shop, claim to be pseudo-medical and exploit children with disabilities by taking advantage of their desperate families…
ErinM wrote:
I worked for them for many years, and they are EXTREMELY corrupt. The trainers are all great people who do exactly as they are told, and help motivate the students. However, they will scam you out of your money and falsify test results. I felt guilty being a part of it after a while.
Lauren P. wrote:
I worked with a LearningRx franchise for 2 years before taking on the role as a test examiner. Shortly after taking on the role, the director pulled me aside and complained about the lack of growth in the final testings I had administered. He said it was very important to remember that our success as a center relies on results found in the final tests and that basically my paycheck relied on seeing growth in the final tests. I’m not stupid and I know what he was asking me to do… I refused to alter final testing scores and was fired from the role. The excuse was that I was not administering the test correctly. I was heartbroken. All of the results I thought my own students were achieving were false. The director was willing to trick parents and manipulate a credible test like the WJIII to make money. It seems most, if not all of these franchises carry this attitude about testing and it’s all about the buck with the directors. I would advise buyer beware.
first-hand-experience wrote:
I also was in management with LearningRx. Let me start by saying, I worked at two different locations (each with different owners). I started as a receptionist and tester and worked my way up to Assistant Director. The first center I worked at was everything negative you’ve heard so far. Everything from falsifying test scores to trying to make her employees claim they were independent contractors…
Others allege that the type and frequency of testing used by LearningRX skews results to indicate progress that doesn’t exist.
One commenter states that progress demonstrated is a result of LearningRX “teaching for the test.”
Alan Balter writes:
…The training is specific to the woodcock johnson III, so if I pretest you and you score badly, then train you specifically to the test, then you show growth ( i would hope), did you really grow? It would be like giving you all the answers to the SAT or intelligene quota and then saying you’re brilliant or belong in MENSA when you do well. bottom line they’re not accurately measuring the programs true effectiveness by not accounting for threats to internal and external validity.
Allison Edge agrees:
As a trainer and tester at Learningrx, I’d like to say that you should be careful when going there. Standardized assessments like the initial and supplemental tests are not meant to be given more than once a year. LearningRx gives them every 4-6 months. This allows the student to get a higher than average score on the test…
sydneysjrstate wrote:
Keep in mind the tests they use to measure grade improvement don’t necessarily correspond to what children are doing in school, and if your child shows two grade level improvements on THEIR TESTS, they get to keep YOUR MONEY!
Lisa wrote:
If you are not familiar with the system, the entrance test and exit test is identical. LearningRX bases success on whether or not the person being trained moves beyond what they are initially able to complete on the test. For instance, if he/she is able to do 3 out of 8 steps on the test when he/she first takes the test, but completes 5 out of 8 when they complete all training, LearningRX has succeeded in helping the person. So, on paper and according to their guarantee, their program has worked. However, there was absolutely NO improvement in any of the areas that had been discussed during the initial visit! In fact, some grades were even worse while taking the training – this was explained away as “normal” at the half-way review point.
Barbara Crewell wrote:
My daughter went through this program at the beginning of this year… now that she is in 8th grade everything has just gone downhill. She has worse grades than ever and has dozens of missing assignments. So I feel like I threw away 7,000 dollars on the product that has no true guarantee. Your guarantee is if she doesn’t improve they will give you an extra month free. That doesn’t sound like a guarantee at all. Maybe if it doesn’t work they refund your damn money, how bout that?
What do you think?
Do LearningRX franchise owners falsify test results?
Is the LearningRX system skewed to indicate imaginary progress?
Are LearningRX trainers and testers under pressure to return positive results, even if it requires questionable tactics?
ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH LEARNING RX AND THE LEARNING RX FRANCHISE OPPORTUNITY? PLEASE SHARE A COMMENT BELOW.
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Thanks for sharing this information Jan. What I know....
1. LearningRx, Learning RX, LRX did make a lot of claims. Especially the director at the center where I worked and as I've said, I was extremely uncomfortable with these claims. I read the article you referred to. The FTC got this spot on except for agreeing to only $200,000 in damages.The owners all live in very nice houses. Ken Gibson lives on a hill west of Colorado Springs in a mansion that overlooks the city.
2. I think Kim Hanson was a school teacher. I think she has her bachelor's. Unconfirmed. I think she lives in Monument, Colorado.
3. Tanya Mitchell is a liar. See her pretending to be someone else at the top of this thread. I think she lives/lived in Colorado Springs -- Rockrimmon area?
4. The fact that LRX LearningRx Learning RX did their own pre- and post-testing; that I personally saw cheating on these tests; that one of the people in my center saw cheating while visiting other centers; that the director of training in the corporate center in Colorado Springs told me that she plays tricks with final testing to get good results (this is the center on Woodmen Rd in Colorado Springs, Colorado and is owned by the home office and was run by Tanya Michell at one point) all point to this result.
I hope the franchisees bring a civil lawsuit and get some of their money back. It is terrible that nice people (some are very nice) are harmed in this. Most franchisees are completely unqualified to talk about the brain or brain research. There is a post online about a franchisee who was a former hairdresser. I once heard a franchisee say that he understands how the brain works because he has a patent for electronic neural networks; if you don't know how unrelated these are, look it up on the network.
I tried to tone down the claims made at my center. Unsuccessfully. Then left after waiting too long. I told the director that we did not have even close to 100% customer success, yet it was claimed to new customers, doctors, and teachers. I told the director that before the program started, it sounded like this was all that was ever needed and the problem would be solved forever, but then at the end there would be a sell job about how customers needed more or needed to come back before the start of middle school or high school or college. I told him that the claims made in the literature could not be made based on the research that had been done. LearningRx itself said that to do the research of in-center training would cost millions, so they created a digital product and tested that -- probably still in progress. They can make no claims. I told the home office that I had seen cheating on testing. I did not tell them that this occurred in my own center -- I wasn't there to get people in trouble. I didn't tell them that their own director of training (who oversaw testing) told me she ensured good final results -- I wasn't trying to get her in trouble -- and she is long gone now, I think. I told them I talked to someone at a center where the trainers tested their own students at the end of training and then got bonuses based on that -- but I didn't tell them which center.
I'm glad the FTC did what they did. Now, I hope that the damage in my community can be undone. Word needs to be spread. I will try to spread it.
By the by, Lumosity also was making claims that had to be removed from their website. I still think brain exercise is a good thing. I just don't think you should pay an arm and a leg for it. Lumosity is much less expensive. But as I said above, you can create your own brain exercises.
All need to look at this article:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/05/marketers-one-one-brain-training-programs-settle-ftc-charges
It is something all customers need to know.
BEWARE OF FAKE POSITIVE REVIEWS:
LearningRx has so many negative reviews and people trying to denounce them that their efforts aren't on doing this legally or morally, but rather on hiring reputation management companies and creating fake positive reviews.
LearningRx even has websites that don't use the Learningrx name in the domain which they've created to post fake (fabricated) positive reviews. They also have many links from within their own official website on reviews in hopes that customers won't find the real reviews, which are negative.
FRAUD, RELIGION, & THE GIBSON FAMILY
The Learningrx family is repugnant and Machiavellian in associating their company religious values of wanting to help children because it requires you to rely on faith rather than science and it leads you to believe they are good people when they are simply predators pulling your emotional strings. It is so disgusting how they tie their fraud to religion, but they realize that talking about religion combined with their "life changing" programs makes it easier to believe their results through faith in miracles, because science is certainly not on their side.
There is much written (See "Older Comments") that is important to read. I think all prospective franchisees, prospective customers, and prospective business partners of LearningRx should read those comments thoroughly. Those comments are substantially and pervasively true.
Avoid LearningRx. The FTC got it right in this case. As a specific example, I was working on an advertising piece, when I asked the home office for citations to support the claims I had written into the piece. The claims were all copied from other LearningRx marketing materials, I found out that the claims were not at all supported by science. They could give me no references, no citations, nothing -- not a single one. I killed the piece and THAT moment was the beginning of the end for me as a franchisee.
After that, I continued on as a franchisee, but the scales started to fall from my eyes and I saw the depth of the deceptions and the conflicts of interest built into the business. I believe LearningRx is full of good people doing bad things because of these built in conflicts of interest (and well-meaning ignorance).
I think the home office is more culpable than the franchisees themselves: Ken Gibson (founder), Dean Tenpas (CEO), Kim Hanson, Tanya Mitchell, and Brett Gibson. These are the folks that created the business model; these are the folks that enforce it.
I think another perspective is important to capture -- the perspective of the former franchisee as a franchisee -- from franchisee training to opening the business to running the business. I am writing a document targeted at current and prospective franchisees.
More to come... I promise. [LearningRx = Learning RX = LRX]
Today is a big day. We are posting the final drafts of each of the sections of the document referred to in the previous post. These will be posted one after another, then consolidated into one longer document to be posted together. However, posting these consecutively on here will help us 'put each one in the bag' only to be changed in minor ways before consolidation into the final document. We warn you in advance that there will be a lot of posts. Enjoy the reading.
Who is the Intended Audience?
If you are considering becoming a LearningRx (Learning RX) franchisee, this
material will help you with your due diligence.
If you are a past, present, or future customer of LearningRx, this material will
help you understand the LearningRx business and product. It will also help you
understand the conflicts that affect you as a customer.
If you are a competing product or service, some of these conflicts may apply to
your business also.
Why are We Writing?
As a former franchisee, we are creating this document to help current and
future franchisees understand the inherent conflicts in the LearningRx Business
Model.
Conflicts of interests abound within this business model and these conflicts
explain much of what franchisees do within this system.
We wish we had been told these things before we wasted good time and money
inside this business.
The conflicts that appear in this document fall into these categories:
* conflicts between the franchisee's interests and the client's interests
* conflicts between the franchisee's interests and the employee's interests
We hope these things help you measure your steps before becoming a LearningRx
franchisee.
**Interjection**
By the by, these materials are written and edited by one of us and reviewed and edited by the other. One of the things I am struggling with is mixing first person singular (I) and first person plural (we) as I write. The previous post mixed these. It should be plural (we).
I suspect, there will be times when we will intentionally use first personal singular (I) because only one of us observed or experienced that particular item. When we are all done, we'll post all the corrections that we find -- striving for both accuracy and perfection.
*** Franchisee Training ***
Imagine you are starting LearningRx Franchisee Training today. You arrived in
Colorado Springs last night. You have two weeks ahead of you.
As you walk across from the Marriott Hotel on Centennial Drive to the LearningRx home office, you turn around and notice how tall and beautiful Pikes Peak is in the morning sunlight -- so beautiful! There is a bounce in your step as you walk in the front door, rise up the stairs and walk straight into the training room. You are ready! You are nervous! Let's start!
In these two weeks you learn many things that we will refer back to later in these materials.
* how to answer the phone
* how to do assessments
* how to do consultations (meetings to sell your service to customers)
* how to do brain training
* how to do advertising and marketing (in its many forms)
* how to do the accounting
* how to design your center
* how to hire, train, and manage your employees
* and much more.
As we help you imagine opening and running your business, we are going
to refer back to these two weeks of training frequently. If we told you everything you need to understand about this training, you'd forget it.
*** Opening Your Business ***
During the flight home, you will daydream about all the children -- all the moms -- all the families -- you are going to help. You know how much work you have ahead of you, but you also know it will be worth it. Your heart is so full of passion and expectation for this business that you cannot wait to start helping others.
Before you know it, the business is ready, the doors are open, the marketing mailers are hitting mailboxes, and you are trying not to watch the phone as you wait for it to ring off the hook. Then it happens, the phone rings! It is a potential customer!
It is a mom calling because she is concerned about her daughter...
***interjection***
As you can tell, these materials are written from your perspective as a new franchisee. You imagine and feel the weight of the conflicts of interest that you will face as a new franchisee as they arise in your own franchise business. We can write these things because these were our collective experience.
Similarly, instead of "a parent calling about his or her child," this first customer interaction will be with a mom calling about her daughter.