LearningRX Complaints: Falsified Test Results

94 thoughts on “LearningRX Complaints: Falsified Test Results”

• I have trained and tested for Learningrx. Testers do not
  Get paid more for better test results and training
  Is not to the test. They also have test results on
  Over 25,000 students. Many franchisees are
  Parents of kids that had learning difficulties. They
  Have very high morals. When one franchisees results
  Were questioned, the franchisee was terminated.
  The writers of the wj3 know exactly how
  Learningrx uses the test and approved the
  Use for measuring results within a 3 month period,
  (Not a year)

  Also, pretty suspicious of the comments
  Since they are all written within a couple days
  Of eachother. Maybe the commenters
  Are trying to sell something else?

• We placed our daughter in Learning Rx to improve her reading, math, and language skills, and it was the worst decision we have ever made for her.

  I do believe the director honestly tested her, but she was dishonest about the center’s experience with children with autism or Asperger’s syndrome. Our daughter struggled through the rhythmic activities and cried at nearly every session. Whereas her test scores at Learning Rx jumped tremendously, she showed no improvement at school.

  I should have realized the only guarantee was an improvement on their test scores, not in her actual learning skills. When we expressed our concerns regarding our daughter’s performance at school after completing the program, the director said that we would see improvements later, and it could take up to year after completing the program for the training to take effect, which never happened.

  I can see where some of the activities may enhance a learning skill, but it cannot help learning disabilities or severe learning problems as the director promised. I regret wasting several thousands of dollars at Learning Rx. Since then, I have found a language program at a local university to help my daughter, and it has been far more effective and costs only a couple hundred dollars.

• I only comment that Tanya Mitchell is the daughter of Ken Gibson (the founder) and a Vice President within this company. Why does she pretend to be just a trainer and assessor for ‘this company’? This is not at all straightforward and is a problem.

  Tanya says ‘they’ in reference to Learning RX. Does Tanya have high morals for talking as if she is not an executive for the company and that ‘they’ includes herself, her father, her sisters, brother, uncles, and whoever else is there at the home office. (Tanya, you have test results on over 25,000 and these only matter if you make sure the testing is accurate.)

  Hey, she did give her real name. That much it good. You can google her and find who she is.

  It does not surprise me that people say that tests have been falsified. When guarantees are made around test result improvements, when center directors hate to go into final reviews with parents without good test results, when trainers are incentivized based on test result improvement there is going to be pressure on test results, even if assessors are not incentivized themselves. However, most people in this company would be offended to hear that a single test result was ever falsified. The people I have met are all good people. I guess the question is whether good people under pressure are doing bad things.

  People I care about work at this company.

• Hi Laura,

  Would appreciate if you can share the contact of the language program provider and website in which you seek help from.

• I am also a trainer in NJ and test results are definitely falsified. I’ve been asked to remove certain results from the test initially and make note to not show these areas on the final test results. If the final test results didn’t come back showing the improvement we wanted to see, we would lie to the parents and say the test results were lost by corporate and we needed the student to retest-sometimes coming in the next day to do the test again. Parents pay a lot of money for this and I think something needs to be done so you get honest results.

• I have put three children through the program and couldn’t be happier. I trust the center as well as the people who run it because I see the results in my children. Results that can and can not be measured. My child who could not read now reads, her memorization skills are excellent and she is excelling in school. My son now completes Math in 30 minutes where it took him 2 hours before.

  I know there are always opposing opinions, however our experience was fantastic. LearningRx was the right answer for us.

• I also saw my center ask kids to come back to redo portions (or all) of final testing because a result was not as good as they wanted or expected.

  There were a few problems I saw: I never saw the redo of a low initial test score, only for final tests because the results weren’t good enough. If a kid was doing poorly on a final test (for example, because she was distracted), the test was to be stopped and the the parent told she’s not ready for testing and to bring her back another day. Yet, I would have kids just as distracted on initial tests.

  Retesting within a couple weeks is a problem. The test is the exact same test. Even if a kid cannot remember the exact question, they remember how the test works and they can try a new strategy. Let’s say the test in on processing speed, but a different strategy gets you 3 years better test result. Is this really improved processing speed or is it improved logic or is it remembering the test? Finally, people without credentials are allowed to do the testing (with permission).

  Ask the director these questions about testing:
  1. How many kids have been through this center for training? [Wait for the answer.]
  2. Can I see ALL of the results for ALL of these students, including supplemental tests? [If you see no negative results, you are being shown doctored or selective results. In fact, if you don’t see __big__ negative drops in some tests, you are being shown doctored results. If you don’t see results that make you wince, you aren’t seeing the whole story. I believe the mom on December 13th above who says her three children saw great results. I saw good results, too. You aren’t hearing the whole story though.]
  3. Do you ever stop or redo a test? initial? final?
  4. Do you ever have students that don’t show results in real life? [Again, if you are told that everyone does well, you aren’t getting the whole story. Also, some kids get test results and hardly any real life results that a parent or teacher can see. You might even be blamed for not seeing them.]
  5. Is there a conflict of interest? [I suspect you’ll be told that there is no conflict because trainers cannot test their own students. True for my center, but I heard the director say multiple times that it was very difficult to do a ‘celebration’ for a student who has poor test results or who lacks real life results. Centers are under tremendous financial pressure. Lots of centers closed during my time with the company. My understanding is that many centers are just doing okay as businesses.]
  5. Do you have completely independent testing results done by an independent professional for students who have been trained at this center? [The answer will almost certainly be no.]

  I have seen parents feel guilty for not giving their kids brain training (because they couldn’t afford it or didn’t have time). I have never seen the director feel guilty. This is backwards.

• I am sorry you all have such a problem with Learning RX, however I can say the learning RX that I am going to has not been anything but AWESOME to me and my son. I am amazed at the progress that my son has made and I would do it again in a heart beat. For a boy that struggled in all subject now wipes through them like they are easy for him. His grades are honor roll and that is with him going in to middle school. I can see a deteremined child that has come a long way and deserves to feel accomplished and I am thankful for Learning RX to help him with that.

• Melissa has given us a data point. Is she saying that LRX does not falsify any test results because the results were not falsified for her son? Is she saying that LRX gets good results for all student because her son got good results?

  If a student works hard and is determined, he or she will get the best results. If a student doesn’t want to be there and doesn’t work hard, results will be worse. If a student doesn’t engage, results will be less. When results are less, there will be more temptation to falsify results.

  I saw some students get excellent results, some students get good results, and some students get poor results. I saw testing mucked with for those who got poor results. Interestingly, it was not so much that mucking with test results was required to meet the guarantee. It was usually because presenting poor results to a parent is hard for the director to do.

  Any center that talks about it like everyone gets results is not telling you the truth. It just cannot be the case that all students give effort and all students get results. Yet, I saw this claim being made all the time. Yuck! I hate sales!

  There is no way that the home office can ensure that results are authentic, correct, and ethical. They would have to do secret shopper kinds of things which would be very costly for travel and expense. I doubt very much that is happening. It would be even harder to detect centers retesting students because of poor results, because they only know things after results get entered into the computer (what they call HUB).

  If you think LRX can get your good results for your hardworking, determined student, you are probably right. If a trainer can motivate your student to be hard working, you’ll probably get good results. But the student who doesn’t give effort is wasting your money. LRX is an expensive program at $5000 for a 12-week pro program and $10K+ for a 24-week pro program. Think of it as burning a 100 dollar bill every time your student doesn’t work.

• In my previous comment, I said Melissa when I should have said Melinda. Sorry, Melinda.

  By the by, I asked the website owner to be able to post an entire page on what I know about LRX (good and bad, because there is both), but they want me to just post comments here. So here is my next installment of what I know. I’m trying to be extremely fair to both parents and LRX, but if someone thinks I’m not being wording things accurately, I’d love to interact on things. It is important that we make accurate statements that convey the full picture so parents can decide.

  I have been thinking about the question of whether LRX teaches to the test. This comes up here and elsewhere on the Internet. I think the answer is both yes and no. Let’s start with background information.

  The test that LRX does is called Woodcock-Johnson. It is a commercially available test that is purchased and used by LRX in all of its centers with permission from the seller. The test is normally supposed to only be administered by professionals with specific degrees and specific training. I recently spoke with someone who was certified in the exam and it was an extensive process of ensuring that the test was administered consistently and accurately. LRX has permission to bypass all of these safeguards within their business. [This would make a good next post.]

  There are seven or eight tests used in the initial assessment that are renamed by LRX as Long-Term Memory, Short-Term Memory, Visual Processing, Auditory Processing, Word Attack, Logic and Reasoning, and Executive Processing Speed. Some centers do other tests and all centers do supplemental tests when a student signs up for the program.

  Why does testing matter within LRX?
  1. It is the basis for the ‘guaranteed’ claim. In a shorter program, LRX guarantees a 2-year gain in at least one skill. In a longer program, LRX guarantees a 3 year gain in at least one skill. Notice that the gain is promised in *any* skill, not the most important or the one most holding your child back. [This would make a good next post.]

  2. It is one way that parents know that they spent their money well. It is not the only way, but many parents want external, objective evidence that improvements were made. This is the reason directors want testing to show good results: parents will see these results at the end of the program.

  3. Centers vary quite a bit on the average increases in test results. But this difference is not based on how profitable the center is. The most profitable centers are more profitable because they are better marketers, networkers, and sellers, not better trainers. The least profitable centers are not less profitable because they get lower training results, but because they lack the ability (or market) to get people in the door (marketing) and into seats (sales). However, if a center gets very poor results, it would cause problems with the home office so testing matters this way too.

  Now that you understand why testing matters, the question arises whether LRX trains or teaches to the test. The following are the similarities between the assessment and the LRX procedures that would be similar for all centers and give me pause:

  1. Compare Attention Speed with the Executive Processing Speed test. In the test, a student circles two images when they appear together in a specific order. There is a third image to distract. The student goes through and circles as fast as possible. Compare this to the Attention Speed procedure which has the student scanning a sheet of numbers and circling a specific number or pair of numbers asked for by the trainer. It is true that the procedure is different (numbers vs images), but all the skills translate directly to the assessment. The LRX trainer teaches its students to go as fast, not worry about being neat, and practicing this over and over. So, I would say every LRX trainer worth her salt is teaching her students how to do speed tests like this. A parent should not be surprised that large processing speed improvements are very common in the program.

  2. Reasoning Cards with the Visual Processing test. In the test, a student has to pick which pieces make up a puzzle. It is really a visual discrimination test that starts easy and gets harder. The test is about seeing things accurately and being able to rotate them in your mind. LRX does these visual thinking cards that teach many skills, but certainly those required for this assessment test. For example, there is a card where the student has to decide which piece fits into a puzzle. Another card asks the student to decide which of two pieces fit. In addition, there is a procedure using tangrams which is also requiring a student to put shapes together to match an image. A parent should not be surprised that large visual processing speed improvements are very common in the program.

  3. Auditory procedures with Auditory Processing test. For example, one procedure has the student reverse the sounds in a word and give the new word (the procedure is called “switch”). This is exactly what is done on the Auditory Processing test where the student is asked to reverse ‘tap’ to get ‘pat’ or to reverse ‘pots’ to get ‘stop’ or whatever. Another example is that there is a procedure (called “drop”) where students drop a sound from a word to make a new word or nonsense word. The assessment does this exact same thing. A parent should not be surprised that large gains in auditory processing are common in the program. (There are pieces of the assessment that don’t appear in the procedures, namely rhyming which almost all students do well.)

  4. Reading lessons and drills with Work Attack test. All students do the first lessons in the reading program, even if they are in the general training program. Reading students do the entire program. There are lessons throughout the reading program that teach the sounds of the English language and how those are spelled. After this, the student is drilled to ensure he knows those sounds/codes quickly and easily. It is important to note that the program doesn’t focus only on those sounds in the test. However, if a trainer is also doing assessments, s/he *could* make sure that the specific codes that the student needs to know on the test are emphasized and mastered. Also, since a trainer gets bonuses based on test results, s/he has a motivation to do so. However, being able to do something and being motivated to do so doesn’t mean everyone does this. In fact, I think the trainers in my center were blameless in this respect. A parent should not be surprised that large word attack gains are very common after the program.

  5. Speed Math procedure with Math Fluency test. The Speed Math procedure is very similar to the Math Fluency test, but this assessment test is only a supplemental test (unlike all of the others above). There are differences, but the differences are not major. The surprise is that larger increases in Math Fluency don’t happen by training this procedure. [One thing to note is that handwriting speed is going to limit this and any other speed tests given on the assessment. If your student writes slowly or precisely, then you are going to get poor results. Is this an indication of a slow mind? I’m not sure. This applies to any processing speed test like the Executive Processing Speed test above.]

  There are other possible overlaps. I have seen trainers practice numbers reversed as a mental activity during procedures. This is the Short-term Memory/Working Memory test in WJIII. If a trainer does this, then it is pretty much identical to the assessment. It is a legitimate mental activity that is a challenge for students, but doing this would mean the trainer is training to the test, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

  Any LRX person who says that he doesn’t teach/train to the test means that they don’t take the specific questions from the test and teach only those few things to their student so that they will do well on a test. However, as the above demonstrates, overlaps between the procedures and the assessment do exist and they are significant, not minor. Also, these are built into the program by the home office, not accidental or because of bad franchisees Most importantly, these similarities make it extremely likely that the guarantee will be met for almost all students. [The whole guarantee thing is also worthy of another post.]

  This is why the guarantee is much less meaningful than it might otherwise be. Much more meaningful would be increases in a test that is not administered by the center itself and a test that has different A & B versions that are used before and after the program (not identical tests which is what LRX does). In the area of reading, there are better tests than WJIII, so those should be looked into as better indicators of progress.

  Go all the way back to the first comment by Tanya Mitchell where she says that training is not to the test. Now you understand all that she is not saying, besides skipping the fact that she is the daughter of the founder of the company and the daughter of Ken Gibson. In a post endorsing the integrity of the company, she lacked integrity. Go figure.

  Anything you disagree with or wonder about my wording, please post and let me know. I’d love to have a dialogue on this topic. I am writing in this teeny tiny window, then editing. If I catch anything in the follow-up reading, I’ll correct it in my next post.

• Woodcock-Johnson III is the test used by LRX. It is important that you know how assessors are trained in LRX, so that you can assess your assessment. There are a few aspects to the assessment:

  1. Training assessors
  2. Assessor qualifications
  3. Frequency of administration
  4. Interpreting the results.

  Let’s talk about these one at a time.

  1. Training Assessors

  Franchisees come back from their training with a boatload of information about everything related to their franchise. This is everything from marketing, networking, systems, procedures, training, and assessments. They had a module during their training on how to do assessments and they have their notes from that module.

  As I understand it, the franchisee has done a few assessments on their own without supervision, practicing what they learned, and asking questions if she or he has them.

  Then, the franchisee trains others to do assessments. This is an extremely weak link, because someone who is not an expert is now training someone who is going to do the assessment.

  As I mentioned in my previous post, I talked through with someone who became certified in WJIII testing and the process she had to go through to compare with what I had seen at LRX. It was night and day. She had to do practices, be filmed, get feedback, all to make sure the results were accurate and consistent.

  LRX gets an exception on how assessors are certified. This means the results from center to center and assessor to assessor probably vary more than they should.

  2. Qualifications of the Assessor
  I do not know the specifics of what WJ requires, but I believe they normally require a person with a bachelor’s degree to administer the assessment.

  I have seen people certified to do assessments who do not have a bachelor’s degree.

  I’m not sure, but if it is not required for LRX it shouldn’t be required for anyone. If it is required for everyone else, it should be required for LRX.

  3. Frequency of Administering the Test
  There is only one test in each LRX center. Normally, Woodcock-Johnson requires a year between tests, but LRX obtained an exception to be able to do testing every 12 weeks. This almost certainly means that the results cannot be compared to the norm group, because the same requirements aren’t being followed.

  If it is okay for LRX, then it should be changed for everyone else. If it is required for everyone else, it should be required for LRX.

  4. Interpreting the Results
  I know that Woodcock-Johnson requires a masters degree in a professional degree (like psychology) to interpret the results from their assessment.

  Why then do franchisees get permission to interpret the results for their clients?

  Professionals have standards of conduct that must be met to maintain their professional associations. Nothing like that exists for a LRX franchisee. Most franchisees don’t have to think deeply about the ethics of testing or the interpretation of results.

  Let me say this, the person interpreting your results is in business to make money. They are interpreting the results in order to sell you a program. This is a HUGE conflict of interest.

  Here’s the back story that I have seen that most parents won’t have seen. A director has an assessment coming up this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon. The assessment results show up on her desk and so she looks over them and the intake form to see how she is going to position the sale. But here’s the problem in our example, while the parents have concerns they don’t show up in the assessment, so she has to figure out how to make the pitch this time.

  The director is taught simple rules from the home office during that whirlwind tour of running a center. Here are some of the guidelines:

  If the student has reading issues, look at Word Attack and Auditory Processing first to show the correlation.

  If the student has attention issues, tie that back to Working Memory and Processing Speed issues.

  If the student struggles with test taking, tie that back to Long-Term Memory or Processing Speed.

  If the student reports math issues, tie that back to logic and reasoning and visual processing, generally. If slow at math, then tie it back to processing speed being slow.

  If the student reports memory issues, then tie that back to memory skills directly.

  If the student is above average in all assessment tests, but still has struggles, then tell mom and dad that the average skills to get into college are at the 80 percentile line and that anything below that is going to feel like a weakness. Point out that inner city students are students on the wrong side of the train tracks are included in the averages, but those don’t really apply here in our suburban community. Then tie in the relative weaknesses to the concerns listed.

  In other words, you have a salesman interpreting your results to make a sale. Sorry, I am sure there are nice people in LRX, but it is an unavoidable fact that this is sales whether you want to call it by that name or not.

  Worse, you have given the answers to the director on the intake form. You have told them your concerns, told them what they have to tie the test to. They are doing exactly that. It’s like giving the answers to the problems to students, are you surprised when every answer is correct and ties directly to your situation?

  [If you want proof that it is sales consider an insiders view: 1) high fives to the director after signups; 2) pay for performance to directors who are not franchisees where pay is tied to signups. Being in the center for as long as I was, I am 100% sure this is sales, but I also know that the word ‘sales’ was verboten.]

  So, it is worse than the fact that a non-qualified, non-professional is doing your interpretation, the person doing your interpretation gains from signing you up.

  Summary
  When I asked why Woodcock-Johnson would approve of LRX doing the testing this way, it was stated that they wanted to sell their materials to LRX.

  When I asked why Woodcock-Johnson would approve of LRX doing testing after only 12 weeks, I was told that the reason.

  I will state my own opinion clearly on this one. I think Woodcock-Johnson has done itself a huge disservice by letting LRX get all of these exceptions and let their test be used in a direct sales situation where moms and their children are potentially harmed. .

  As the LRX executive (Tanya Mitchell) says in a previous comment, the company has permission to do what they do with the assessment. Fine, but that doesn’t make it good for moms and their children that you obtained permission to waive the safeguards to testing.

  Another follow-up post will come on how to do an effective consultation that results in a sign-up (i.e., a sale).

  To end this one with something practical, ask the person doing the assessment for their qualifications and ask the person doing your consultation how they are compensated for their work. Are you bold enough to ask the question? [I assure you that they are going to be bold enough to ask you very personal questions about your children and family. They practice it until they are very good at it.]

  [If you think I have misstated anything, please post a follow-up comment. I’d be happy to interact to make sure accurate statements are being made.]

• Corrections and errata.

  1. To the extent that a student works hard, he or she will get good results at LRX. Effort produces results. There is no shortcut in nature. That the testing process is flawed doesn’t change this fact. One might

  2. I meant to say Tanya Mitchell is an Executive Vice President. In editing, somehow I said the same thing twice which was my error. [I noticed that on another website Kim Hanson didn’t say who she was a few years ago when she posted as kipsmommy, but more recently was forthcoming about who she is which I think shows she is higher integrity. Tanya didn’t correct this.

• I hate mistakes. I accidentally hit submit before finishing that sentence. Here is the rest of my thought.

  One might get the impression that LRX always gets results. This simply cannot be the case unless all students give effort and all trainers are capable. I have personally seen exceptions on both of these criteria.

• Let’s make it clear that LRX is a business. They are in business to help children, then to turn a profit in doing so. No matter what impression you have about any individual center, that center is a business. Let’s understand the business the way a center director understands the business.

  Here is the simple overview of the LRX business process.

  1. market to help your potential customers call you on the phone
  every good center knows its conversion ratios of how much it spends on particular kinds of marketing and how that translates to assessments, consultations, and customers.

  2. turn phone calls into assessments
  every good center is able to convert a high percentage of phone calls into assessments. I tihnk this percentage is in the 70% to 80% range. the person answering the phone has been trained how to not answer your questions on cost. here’s how this works.

  You: Hi, I got your flier in the mail. I wonder how much your program costs.

  DFI: That’s a good question, but it varies a lot for each individual student. What’s your child’s name? (answer) How old is s/he? (answer) What are you seeing? (answer) The first step in finding the answers to your questions is to schedule an assessment. The assessment takes about an hour. Are you available on Monday at 10 AM or Wednesday at 9 AM?

  You: (if you are the rare bird who can still remember your original question) Okay, but I’d like an idea how much it costs?

  DFI: It varies from situation to situation because our program is customized to particular students. The director will help you discover that in the consultation, but the first step is the assessment. Are you available…

  Here is your answer in black and white, because it is not all that complicated. This will get your into the ballpark on the dollar amount:

  The shortest duration program LRX centers do is 12 weeks, though this number is increasing as centers sell longer and longer programs. The program is sold is 4 week increments, but the most common program lengths are 12, 24, and 36 weeks.

  The program is delivered either as a partner or a pro program. In the partner program, there are three hours in the center with a trainer and three hours at home with you (or with the online digital trainer called Max). In the pro program, you will be in the center 5 hours per week. You will often pay more per hour for the partner program, but there is little justification for this. It is true that the center trains you to train your student, but you also end up doing as much work as the trainer in the center (or more). Be this as it may, we can estimate program costs now.

  Let’s use $85 as a per hour estimate. 12 weeks in a 3 hour per week (in the center) program at $85 per hour puts you around $3000. The center I was in had this closer to $4000. So let’s say $3000 – $4000. This is your baseline for a 12-week partner program.

  Now, in the pro program, you’ll have 12 weeks in a 5 hour per week program at $85 per hour. Your calculator will pop out $5000. I have heard some centers are less than this and some more, so this is a good estimate.

  If you are going to expect changes in reading *or* math, then double the above, because you’ll be placed in a 24-week program. Partner in the $7000 range. Pro in the $10,000 range. Plus or minus.

  If you are going to expect changes in both reading and math, then triple the above, because you’ll be placed in a 36-week program. Partner in the $10,000 plus range. Pro in the $15,000 range. Plus or minus again.

  What you cannot know is how much change you can expect to see in your child and how much value you place on this change. As you can read above, Melinda paid this kind of money and ended up happy. Many parents end up happy. Some end up disappointed. Some should be disappointed, but aren’t. I’ll give you more information to think through this below.

  4. turn assessments into consults
  Every good center has a very high conversion of assessments into consults. The expectation is 100%. Center personnel are told not to give too much information before the consult because this will result in parents feeling like they have gotten the answers they wanted and not showing up. So, if you talk to the director or the DFI, you are going to be answering a lot of questions, not getting answers. You’ll be told that the answers you are looking for will come in the consultation when you see the test results.

  It is important to note that you turn in an intake form at this point in the process. The intake form gives the center a ton of information about you and most parents answer it all and as accurately as possible. At the assessment, you turn in an intake form where you give a lot of information about your concerns. You check boxes on what issues you see with your child and answer questions on practical questions about how your child compares to others on a scale from 0 to 4. You also say why you are at LRX and what you hope to achieve. These are very important in the next step.

  5. turn consultations into students
  One thing to mention here is that scoring an assessment takes less than an hour to score and enter and print. So, you could get your results in an hour, but the center director wants you to have time to look at your results and your intake form AND for you to anticipate seeing the results. She wants you to wonder what it will show, what answers you will get. This makes it more likely that you sign up.

  You will be told that anyone who will be involved in the decision should be in the consultation room during the consult. This most often means that moms have to get their husbands there, but sometimes it also means an aunt or grandparent will be there because they are going to be spending the money. Here’s the deal. The consultation is a controlled experience lead by the director that leads someone to sign up for the program. If someone is not in the room, then they are most likely to refuse to consent to the program. So, centers will be quite insistent that your husband be there or your wife be there or your child’s grandparent be there.

  The ratio of consultations to signups is a very important metric in any business like this. So, the director walks into the room with the goal of signing you up either that hour or within a few days. There are some exceptions to this when you have given indications that you cannot at all afford the program. In these cases, you might not even be shown a price sheet.

  If the director is a franchisee, then the profits in the center are determined by you signing up. If the director is an employee of the franchisee, then his or her pay is probably based on her ability to create revenue for the business. This means signing up children into the program. It makes sense and probably all tutoring centers work this way. You just may not be aware of it, because it is not shown to you in the process.

  The consultation process is its own post. If I put it here, you’ll lose the thread of the business process.

  You write your feedback and rating of the consult into a computer. The director uses this to help understand the follow-up sales process. If you say, it looks like what we need but it costs too much, she’s thinking she needs to offer you the loan program or to ask if there is a grandparent who can help you pay for what your child needs. There are no secrets in business.

  6. turn you into a yes (a sign up)
  The director doesn’t want a no. The director wants you to make this decision as close to possible to the emotions you expressed as possible. This may mean at the end of the hour consultation or it may mean within a few days. But the emotions have to be strong. The percentage of signups goes down as the time from the consultation increases.

  If you ask about negotiating, you’ll be told that the company doesn’t negotiate. Franchisees are told not to negotiate price. Fine, but price is negotiable. I saw parents get discounts for all kinds of reasons. Here’s how I once saw this done that worked well. The parent said, “I see that this is what my son needs. He needs 24 weeks to finish the program. I also see that it is best if we do this in the center, but we want to only come 4 days per week. However, we only have $8500 for this, so if you can figure out a way to get us into the program for that much money, I’d be willing to do that. Maybe during a lull in your business call me because we don’t need to start right now.

  Know this, the director will be looking at the monthly bookings and think, “Wouldn’t these numbers look so much better with that $8500 in there than without it in there?” Or the director will hear a few trainers say that they really want another student as soon as one can be found and the director will think, “We have this open slot and I have the perfect student, I just need to be able to figure out how to say yes to this person without appearing like I’m negotiating.”

  So, if you are going to negotiate, do the director one more favor. Don’t ever talk about ‘negotiating’. Instead, give her a reason to give you a discount. Maybe you are willing to train before school is out, so you might figure out an off-peak discount. Or, you might ask the director if they ever provide discounts. Or, maybe you are related to the friend of a trainer and you get the family discount. Or, maybe you have already shared the program with another family, so you get the shared-with-another-family discount. Or, maybe you didn’t come in as a result of marketing that was expensive so you ask for the ‘drive by’ discount. Or, maybe you ask if they ever have coupons. You get the idea, be creative and get a discount. If you directly ask the question whether discounts are ever given, you might be able to figure out an existing discount that makes sense for you.

  By the by, you will likely be told that there is a paid-in-full discount of 5% (or whatever) or a pay with a check, not a credit card 3% discount (or whatever). These are places to find discounts. Do not pay in full, ever. It emotionally makes it difficult for you to pull out of the program. But if you say, “Hey, give me the off hours discount and I’ll pay with checks so that you don’t have to incur the cost of my great-perks credit card” this might tip the scales.

  Also, know this, the slowest times in most centers happen before school opens and during the November/December holiday seasons. You could also use these as leverage points. “Hey, I’ll sign up here in December if you can get me that discount.”

  7. Get you to sign the contract
  There are a lot of issues associated with this, so we’ll leave those for another post.

  8. Schedule you for supplemental testing
  You are paying for this in the program. You should ask for the results and have them explained to you. Why do you need to pay for these? (The home office insists that certain assessments are done for each particular program.) Is the guarantee for only the original tests that caused you to sign up? (It should be, but I think most centers consider a gain in any test as meeting the guarantee.) Reinforce that the reason you are here is to get gains in these three specific areas (list them) and make sure you have the director’s eyes looking into yours as she says that you can rest assured that you will get those results.

  9. Schedule you to start training
  You are in the program now. This needs it’s own posting, because there is a lot to tell parents here.

  10. Get you through to the end.
  You do final testing. You have a program review or whatever your center calls them where you celebrate and get the testing results, the list of most significant improvements, and so forth. This is another separate post, because the whole reason this thread began is that people within LRX have seen final test results mucked with. I have seen this too, but I think I can tell you why when and how. This is in some of the posts above, but I have my own take on this.

  You enter your feedback on the program into the computer with your comments. Every word you say can be seen by the center director and personnel (and the home office). Most all parents rate the center as an 8, 9, or 10. The center I was in improved its scores by how it presented the question. The final question is something like, how likely are you to tell someone about the program. If you have already done that, then you might be told, well that’s a 10. Of course, this is part of why the numbers are so incredibly high for any business… something on the order of 9.5 out of 10 for all centers. The home office takes great pride in these numbers, so centers care about them too.

  In conclusion, every parent needs to know that this is a sales process and that they are being sold. Sure, the business is about caring about students / children / adults / seniors, but the end result of all that caring is supposed to be a profitable business. Also, I assume some of you will sign up and go through the program. That is reasonable because LRX gets good results for those students who work hard and stay focused on training, who have fun through the process. Signing up is the right answer as long as you do so with your eyes wide open. That’s why I am here, because I don’t think most parents have their eyes wide open.

  Here’s one thing I will say in a future post, if you walk into a center and you have access to the money, then you are going to be told the benefits of being in the center are worth every penny you will spend. You’ll rarely if ever hear that you don’t fit the profile for brain training or that you aren’t likely to get results. The exceptions are going to be the outliers like your child is 3 years old or your mom is 72 and isn’t aware of her surroundings any more or your child is blind (the procedures require sight) or deaf (the procedures require hearing) or that your son is excessively violent or whatever. If you don’t have an obvious physical malady or dangerous behavior, you will be told that you will see tremendous benefits from brain training.

  I hope you find the help you need for your children whether LRX or not. I’m no longer drinking the LRX Kool-Aid™. It helps some a lot, some a little, and some not at all. You decide.

• Unless you have $300,000 to $500,000 to sink into this framchise, and know you can sell ice to an eskimo, I would advise you look before you leap. That money is in addition to the franchise which someone in my family paid $78,000. They are now on the verge of bankruptcy. Learning rx is in the business of selling franchises, and after that they are not done with you, as you must give them a portion of the money you get from students, which is another source of revenue they have, for themselves being able to sell ice to eskimos. One is not even started after the franchise. You must pay and train your teachers, reviewers, etc, if you can find them. Then, if they work, you must pay them for hours worked. Say you get ten students who will attend 100 hours each–you must then come up with 1,000 hours @ $20 per hour or $20,000 of the money collected, and that is only the beginning. You must pay rent for a facility, plus all utilities, which runs about $5,000 per month. And, you must still work!!!!!
  getting new students and having them assessed, which is more cost. Believe me, you will not make a cent unless you have another business, like being a doctor , etc. And, getting ten students who pay the full amount of the course is a food trick. After assessing over 100 possibles, our facility got three!!!!!We are now on the verge of bankruptcy–we had to sell the furniture, desks, etc. at our school which we paid over $10.000 for, for less than 1/2 price. Those “teaching” your children are people picked up casually who knew nothing about this program but had to read the rx books and go from there. This program is one BIG scam, where the ones selling franchises are the only ones benefitting from this program. ll

• The previous comment is a bit crazy. If one is going to point out the flaws of a system, one should at least be close to the mark.

  Is it expensive to start a LearningRx franchise? Yes, on the order of $100K – $200K.

  Is it difficult for most franchisees to get a good return on this investment? Yes, very difficult. Some franchisees are doing very well and those will be shown to you as the model, but in most markets, most franchisees struggle to get a return on their 10-year investment in LRX. In fact, many franchisees are closed well before the 10 year lease on the business is complete.

  Is the business a scam? Um, I wouldn’t go that far. I think it is a terribly difficult busienss to get a return on your money, but it is not a scam. There is a real service. There is training on how to provide that service. But marketing this business is hard and finding customers is hard. If there is any scam in the business it is related to the fact that test scores are not always accurate. I just heard recently about a center that put a great deal of pressure on its trainers to increase test scores.. that is just problematic. Why not just emphasize good training and let the test scores fall where they fall? Sigh…

  Is the business straighforward? Nope. Read all of what I wrote above about how the product is sold and so forth. The business is a service with an intangible outcome.

  I heard an ad on the radio from another business today that read a ‘voluntary’ letter complimenting the business. That caused me to think how few letters to the LRX I was at were voluntary. All kinds of effort was made to get customers to write nice things about the business after the fact.

  Is the business a ‘good’ business? Nope, not for most people. For most people, the idea of helping people will suck the $100K out of their pocket, then they will fold their business at a loss. But by the time you quit the home office will replace you with another business. As long as the home office can replace folding franchisees with new ones they will not feel the financial pressure that most franchisees feel.

  I would not recommend this business to anyone unless you are in a clearly superior market and you have excellent business skills. It is not enough to love kids, you have to know how to network, market, and so forth, and your skills must be well above average because many excellent people are barely scraping by in this business.

  If you are considering this business as a business, you should call former franchisees that failed and those who are struggling and really consider their stories. You will be shepherded to the best franchisees and encouraged to sign up, but you sholud only call those after you have gotten a feel for how hard the business is. If you think, ‘Hey, this won’t be that hard and we’ll help lots of kids.’ You should really think twice before doing this. If you think, ‘Hey, this is going to be really hard business and I may lose my shirt but it is worth it anyway.’ Then and only then are you ready to sign on the dotted line.

  By the by, franchisees have an investment in getting new franchisees. The day new franchisees stop coming in the home office will struggle and the system will struggle and eventually die. When you talk to existing franchisees, you are talking to a biased source. They want the system to survive and thrive.

• We are considering the Charlottesville, VA Learning Rx center having had our 18yr. old son tested and met this morning to discuss his results and the programs benefit to him. He has been homeschooled since the 5th grade and we have been painfully aware of his cognitive processing issues having him evaluated at other clinics including an AMEN clinc’s SPECT exam in his early teens. Have read all this and am unconvinced this program would ‘fix’ his learning disability in the long term. Maybe in the short term but after a 36 wk program there what’s a parent to do?

• I can verify that all the negative comments made about LRX are pretty accurate. I don’t know if LRX has so-called “exceptions” from the makers of Woodcock-Johnson. As stated the Gibson Test is a really short version of a make believe test. NOT an IQ test. Just because some portions are from legit tests doesn’t mean its based on a legit test. It’s based on the idea of a legit test.

• John,

  I think a person can improve cognitive skills through consistent brain exercises, but am unconvinced that you need to spend upwards of $10,000 to get those results.

  Here are things to help you. LRX centers SAY that you cannot expect to see results before the second half of a program. This is said whether the program is 12 weeks or whether the program is 36 weeks, so it simply cannot be true. i think you can expect to see results by about the 6th week and if you don’t, you should stop and find another solution. This is true whether you are doing a $100 per year program like Lumosity.com or a $15,000 36-week program through a center.

  As a person who used to be at a LRX center, I can tell you there is a lot of contradictory stuff that goes on with results. Let me be specific. While signing up, you will be told that you should not expect results until the second half of the program. However, on the second day of training, a student is asked, “What is your improvement today?” Shouldn’t the student respond, “I shouldn’t expect improvements until the second half of the program”?

  LRX centers are businesses. They want you to stay and spend all the money you signed up to spend. If you are looking for results within the first month of a program (about how long you can expect to start seeing results from the program itself and not something else like your student trying harder), then you are putting completing the program at risk. In my years with LRX, there were many students that should have been pulled from the program early, but kept going.

  This is why this is hard though. Some students turn on the switch later in a program. However, these are exceptions, not the rule. Of 100 students that don’t see much result at 6 weeks, those who turn on later is a relatively small percentage — something like 10% or 20% — certainly not 80% or 90%. Yet, the way the center director talked at my center, it was made to seem like it was 90% of these students (or even 100%).

  Another contradiction is that LRX sells a fully digital product, then talk out of both sides of their mouths about it. If you cannot afford anything, you will be told the results of the digital program are quite good. If a center wants to set up training with a school, the school will be told how great the program works. If you drive up in a nice car as an individual, you’ll be told that in-center, one-on-one brain training is so much more effective than digital products. Which is it?

  Here’s the problem; If the digital product is truly effective, then it would displace the money machine that is in-center training. The digital product can cost as little as $500 or $1000 for a year of use.

  Another contradiction, if you bring up lumosity.com, you’ll be told that research results show that digital products don’t show results. Um, LRX won’t say that about it’s own digital product, so why would it say that about lumosity.com? Here’s the next rub, lumosity.com costs much less that LRX’s digital product and is much more polished and easy to use. I have used both and found lumosity to be a brain workout than the LRX programs.

  So, try lumosity.com. Do it regularly for 45 minutes per day for 6 weeks. See if there are results. If there aren’t, then tweak that or pick something else. There are a lot of ways to train the brain. The principles are the same no matter which product you use: 1) Work intensely; 2) Be consistent; 3) Strive to thrive; 4) Repeat as necessary.

  If that doesn’t work, drive up to a LRX in a clunker and park it right up front and hear the praise for the digital product and how it has worked so well at various schools or at some university that is doing research on the product. This would cost you $1000 or so.

  I know it sounds like I have nothing good to say about LRX. I have some good things to say, I think that one-on-one training is best. I think the owners/employees mean well. Yet, I think that good people do bad things after investing $100K to $150K in a business, then having to make good on that investment. I think that hired center directors get incentivized by the revenue they produce and that this causes them to figure out a sales pitch to generate that revenue.

• The Gibson Test is a test created by LRX that is accessed through the Internet. It is not the test used to assess students before and after the program, but is used in marketing its digital product (BrainSkills) and is also used in marketing to schools and groups. The Gibson tests all have an element of speed of response in the assessment scoring which is not true of the Woodcock-Johnson testing.

  The tests used by LRX for pre- and post-testing (before and after a program) are portions of the Woodcock-Johnson battery of tests. Some of these tests are in the cognitive battery and some are in the achievement battery (different books).

  No matter which test, LRX is a commercial enterprise using the testing to convince a client to sign up for an expensive program and to demonstrate that there are objective results as a result of the program. This also creates a conflict of interest that is the original complaint in this long thread. It definitely belongs on the list of legitimate complaints against LRX.

  I don’t think the Gibson Test in and of itself belongs on that list unless it too gets misused. I am not aware of this happening, but then parents usually administered the Gibson test at home without any professional oversight. I’m not sure I could have seen anything.

• woops, hit send without typing everything. I ALMOST made the decision to invest in this training for my dyslexic daughter BUT I tend to wait on ANYTHING that involves this much money. I did research. If the WJ III test isn’t done by certified administrators, how can I be certain the test is valid, that is only the first concern. My real concern was the person going over the results with me didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know, only spit back at me what I had put down on paper for her to read prior to the session. That was a big red flag. She took my desperate mommy concerns and used them in a sales pitch…NOT COOL. There’s a lot of almost medical language in the marketing…..I’m an RN and see ZERO medical backing. I asked if they had brain imaging pre and post for TBI clients or any clients that would indicate an increase in neuro activity…as you’re led to believe on the website…….nope. My daughter has dyslexia to the max and struggles to read/write. When I get the lessons at home there’s a 17 point swing in her grades. She’s mostly an A/B student with a few Cs here and there..but that’s with hard work. I wanted to find something to make it easier for her, and sadly, this doesn’t seem like the answer. I’ll keep looking, but if any of you know of a good dyslexia program..I’m all ears. thanks:)

• I’m a network correspondent for CBS-News working on a story about private tutoring companies such as Learning RX. I’m trying to get a balanced assessment of how they operate and if they’re truly effective. If any of you former employees or customers would like to tell me your experiences, please drop me a note: dahlerd@cbsnews.com.

  Thanks.

• Rebecca,

  Here is a link for information about Dyslexia: http://www.dys-add.com
  Susan Barton really knows her information.

  Any Orton Gillingham curriculum works wonders with students with Dyslexia. I work at a learning center that uses Wilson, but there are a few others that work as well. Susan’s web-site above has a list of all the the Orton Gillingham curriculum.

  I would recommend the learning center that I work for (Apples of Gold), but unfortunately it is only located in central Iowa for the time being.

• I would like to take a moment to tell you about my experience at the Lafayette LearningRx. When we reached out to them we were feeling desperate for help with our 5 year little boy, while brilliant he could not seem to remember the names of letters and numbers. When I spoke to them we were told how they could help that they would test him and come up with a program that would be for him and his needs, that would work on locating the problem area and that they train his brain to work past the problems that he was having. However, what we found when we got there was nothing like that at all…what happened was, yes our child was taken off to be tested and we were shown a video that promised the answers that we were desperate for. Then we were taken to the director’s office in the back, note before our child was even out of testing, and she started her sells pitch on a “cookie cutter” program for our child. We were told how this is the answer….how was she to know his testing wasn’t even back but she knew his problem and this prebuilt program was the answer, not the specific program of cognitive skills that he needed help on but this one. Then came the “test results” he was given an IQ test that showed our child was below average that his IQ was a 78!! That he was a year or more behind on ever age level cognitive skill, we were shocked at this. But, then came the reason why his test results were so low… because the director was promising us IN WRITING that the program would increase his IQ and cognitive skills, that they would increase his IQ by 15 to 20 points. My husband and I at this point both saw this as a scam; it was a sells pitch for a cookie cutter program with padded test scores to insure results. How can I say that it is a scam and that the results were padded well that following week we took our child to a licensed clinical psychologist and he performed several test on our child including an IQ test and not only is our child’s IQ not low, it is extremely high he is not years behind in any cognitive skills the one and only problem area that the test showed was connecting the names of letters and numbers to the images of the them.
  It is sad that there are companies out there like this that feed off of parents in crisis, looking for help for their children. That they promise help to desperate families with testing that they don’t even have the skills nor license to interpret. That they guarantee results off of altered scores and lowered cognitive skills. They advertise a program built to help with our child’s individualized problems but all they have to offer is a prebuilt program for all, at an outrageous cost. I will share this on every site out there about LearningRx so that other families searching for answer for their struggling child will not waste $300.00 on testing or time trying to find help at this awful company.

  Sadly Disappointed,

• Renea:

  You have pointed out something very insightful about LRX.

  If you showed me your intake form, I’d tell you in less than 2 minutes which program you’d be sold and could give you an estimate of how long the program would be. If you mention reading struggles, the program would be 24 weeks. If you mention math struggles, the program will be 24 weeks. If you mention serious concers with both, you’ll be sold a 32-week program. If you have general concerns about memory or attention skills you’ll be sold a 12-week program, though many centers are trying to get these to be 16-weeks. In other words, without testing results, I could tell you the program you’d be recommended.

  The purpose of the testing is to back up what the director already knows she wants to sell. The director does not come to the test scores wondering if she will recommend a program, but thinking about how she’ll use the test results to give objective evidence to what you already know. It gives her recommendation greater credibility in your eyes.

  That the director talked with you before you had gone through the process is a violation of LRX protocol. They usually try to avoid any discussion of what you need until you have tested, waited, then gone through the consultation process of baring your soul. Then and only then should you be told that all that you have expressed shows up in the cognitive testing and that the ‘custom program’ will be 24 weeks or whatever. Only then are you to be told the cost after you have gone through all this.

  I didn’t see so much messing with initial test scores to make them lower. It may have happened, but I mostly saw the games being played on the final testing to make sure the results that showed up were ‘fantastic’ and ‘blew parents away’ and ‘gave parents all that they asked for’.

  That you did independent testing is excellent. I wish all parents that did LRX would do before and after testing with an independent expert, because it would take away the bias of the company from the testing. It would show you if you really did get those changes. However, professionals usually do a lot more testing at a correspondingly greater price, so I never once saw a parent do this. At LRX, they are going to make up any losses in testing by selling you a high-priced program. That is not something the professional assessor usually does, so he/she can’t justify extremely low prices for the assessments.

  Now, any LRX director worth her salt is going to point out that the program is customized within each program. You’ll be told that the trainer will work more on reading or memory or math or whatever. Well, that is partially true, but it is also partially false. The reading program is a step-by-step program that takes a student from the very beginning to the very end in almost all cases. Exceptions exist, but they are rare. The trainer will be told to do all procedures to a level of challenge with all students — what that level of challenge will be will vary. However, it is the exact same procedures for all students within the given program.

  Enough said. Thanks for sharing.

• Rebecca:

  LearningRx franchisees receive no training on the brain. If you want to know how much your franchisee really knows you have to learn about the brain and then test them. Ask them detailed questions and they won’t know the answers. If they do, it is because they have read a bit. But for the most part, a lot of brain terminology is thrown around in the center and parents don’t know that the person is not really an expert in anything … especially not the brain.

  Most of the best franchisees are business people who are good at advertising and marketing and posing as the expert in the community. There is an exception or two where the director has a PhD in something related. I give those folks more respect, but this is atypical.

  At the corporate office, the only PhD is Ken Gibson. His degrees is not in neuroscience or cognitive psychology or anything like that. That is rarely if ever clarified for customers.

  Therefore, just as I just said to Renea, the director takes a few rudimentary facts about your child and your concerns and makes a recommendation of a program. It couldn’t be any other way. It franchisee training Ken Gibson takes about an hour and shows example test results and the franchisees get to the point where in less than a minute they can say which program they will recommend.

  Ken Gibson also teaches how to manage the sales process so that the franchisee can be trusted. He tells franchisees to be open about some weaknesses for people to trust them. This is a blatant manipulation tactic. He said he had done it to the franchisees in the room when he admitted that marketing is the weakness of the company. Well, duh, marketing is always hard.

  When the parent of a struggling child is also a sales person, the tactics don’t work as well. I remember a father say after the sales pitch that he does the same things as a sales person. Creating a sense of need. Creating hope that there the parent has ‘found’ the solution. Creating a sense that no price is too much if he/she loves his child. Bam! Sign on the dotted line. $14,000 and 32 weeks of your life.

  LRX does help some people. It is all the rest that cause me to keep coming back here and reading and posting. If you know how the LRX sausage is made and still want to eat the sausage, then you are an informed customer. You can protect yourself. You can get out if you see warning signs — stopping a program. You can do independent testing. You can know not to pay in advance, but to pay as you go and expect results all the way along the way. You can watch the training with your own eyes as often as possible to make sure that it passes the test of looking like your child is engaged and that it is a good use of time.

  You decided not to do the program. I think that is a reasonable decision that more parents should make. There are other solutions for your child in the area of reading that are also effective for some… many of which cost less.

• If I got approved for payment via credit card program but have not started the training yetas I am still not 100% convinced, will I owe the franchise any money?
  Thanks for the insight.

• I you read the fine print on the credit program associated with LRX, I think it should give you pause. I have heard people say that they were changed for the financing fees when they stopped their program, meaning that you’ll pay more than for the services provided to you and you won’t get all your money back. That is really bad and all there in the fine print.

  If you can’t afford the program, do an alternative like Lumosity.com. It is much less expensive and does the same kind of intense training. The only thing to know is that you should have your child (or yourself) do more training than they require each day. Maybe 45 minutes per day 5 times per week. I think their minimum is only 15 minutes which is fine if you are going to do it long-term and you aren’t in a hurry.

  I don’t think you should be totally convinced about the program. It only works if your child works hard and the trainer is well trained and does a good job. And no matter what you do, the company will figure out a way to meet the guarantee in almost all cases, so that doesn’t mean much.

  Other than suggesting that you read all of the above, I don’t know what else to say to you.

• I continue to run into people who were customers at LRX. I tell them I am no longer doing that, but they usually want to talk anyway. Usually, I have to apologize to them. Here is an example.

  A mom had her daughter in a long program at LRX a couple years ago. This mom was a friend whom I told about our program. So, I’m part of the reason she came and spent her money.

  She thought she had good results at the time, but has seen huge regression since then. She now thinks her daughter is as much of a struggler as ever.

  The thing about this that interested me is that I heard the director promise people over and over that the results would last in all cases, that there was never an exception, that people continue to get better even AFTER the program is done.

  In the end a lot of money went down the drain for this woman. She spent on the order of $13K and ended up thinking it was a waste.

  This is interesting because I heard all kinds of comparisons about how LRX wasn’t expensive if you understood the value of the program, if you understood how much of a difference it would make in the life of your child. Well, what about if the results dissipate over time or weren’t real in the first place?

  There is so much pressure on students and parents to see results in the program (every single day we had to write down an improvement of some kind).t I always wondered what was real and what was said just to appease the trainer or the director. In the end, I came to the conclusion that the pressure was bad and it causes students to lie to make the trainer happy. Also, parents see something for a day or two and report it, but when they come back and say they aren’t seeing those things continue, those IMPROVEMENTS never get removed from the list.

  LRX just makes me sick. Maybe I should move to a new town so that this stops happening. For all of you who read this, I apologize to all of you all across the USA for being part of this organization. It is sad that people get into these things and pass along half-truths and lies. I was part of this and I hope you find this and see that I am sorry. I am really sorry for my participation in all of this.

• I want to thank Former LRX for everything posted. You may feel sorry for your participation in the past, but feel appreciated for taking time to help educate desperate parents. My daughter has struggled with homework all year. I am trying to find something to help her. I took her to LRX and she had the assessment. I just had the consultation. I was very disturbed at the expense. I have her in private school and the 24 week program is more than a year of school! However, I am desperate. THANK YOU for helping open my eyes to the true nature of LRX. I now see how I was set up based on what I wrote on my original survey. It would have been much more informative if my child was tested before I gave them any information. Then, if the scores on the test matched my concerns I could see that things were not fixed. I do believe that my daughter would work hard and be engaged with the program. Thanks to you, I know that I can say to the director that I won’t be able to do the 24 week program but might be able to do the 12 week program if I get a discount. I feel empowered to not be taken advantage of by LRX. I’m so glad I saw your posts.

• Mimi:

  You are most welcome.

  Hope you find the help your daughter truly needs. If she is struggling with reading, read “Why Our Children Can’t Read” by Dianne McGuinness. This book is very similar to what LRX does and you could figure it out from here. Though it is not a workbook, the ideas are the same.

  If she struggles with advanced math (beyond Algebra), go to a specialist in math. The LRX math program is its weakest program., especially for high school math.

  If she is struggling with attention and memory, try Lumosity.com.

  Almost every student in a long program was in a reading program, a math program, or had issues with attention/memory. These may provide you the answers you need.

  By the by, I just talked a woman who enrolled her daughter in a LONG program at LRX a number of years ago. This is a different one than the one I shared recently. The results at the end for this girl showed huge gains on the testing, but mom still has the same exact concerns for her daughter that she had before she did the program. Her daughter is not doing well in school (won’t graduate high school on time), called stupid by others, and feels terrible about herself. While her daughter worked hard and enjoyed her trainer, the differences before and after really don’t amount to a hill of beans. Mom told me she spent north of $10,000. The thing she reminded me was that we told her that the changes would be significant and lasting, but neither was true. The changes didn’t last. So, here is another counter example to what I said in my early posts.

  I apologized to mom on this one. For over a year, I used this girl’s test results and improvements from her training records as an example of how we made huge gains for customers. I told people she made something like 5 years of gain across all cognitive skills. And here it is 4 or 5 years later and I hear that mom is not at all seeing those gains in real life and never really did. Very sad to me that I was part of spreading that lie.

  I keep checking in on this site and writing for this reason. People have been hurt by me and I want parents to feel less pressure and be in more control with LRX. I am coming to the conclusion that the best discount you can get at LRX is to find an alternative (see my thoughts above). This may not always be the case, but just be careful.

  There is a lot of research that shows the brain changes as you use it. So the problem isn’t in the physiology, but somehow in the LRX method. So, teach, train, encourage your daughter until she sees the improvements she needs. Believe in a better day and I hope that day will come for her sake. If I could help more, I would.

  Ask if you have specific questions and I’ll try to get back to you. I check in about monthly, though not always that often. :( I will get back to you though — if I’m still breathing. :)

• Hello,

  I’m still breathing. :)

  If you have read all of the above, then you know that I have said that I have thought that LRX would work for some people and not for others. I still think this.

  However, I have now run into 5 mothers who said that they did not get results even though they all did long programs of more than 24 weeks. All of these moms gave the center high ratings when leaving. Now they think the results did not last or were not real in the first place and they regret spending the time and money and they do not recommend it to others. I have reported on some of these before, but this just happened again over the weekend.

  In this latest instance, the mother said her daughter did a long program. I think she said 36 weeks, but it was over 30 weeks for sure. She thought her daughter was doing much better, but now she is not that much better than she was before the program. The daughter was in the center more than a year ago. Mom talked to the director of the center and he wants her to come in for another 36 week program and pay ANOTHER $10,000 to $15,000!!! The same director who said over and over and over that ‘all children see good results unless parents undermine the program.’ The same director who said the results were guaranteed. (READ the GUARANTEE! It doesn’t amount to much as seen in this case.) This is a stellar mom and a sweet woman; she did not undermine the program. Her daughter was a sweet girl and she worked hard. The blame is not on them. At some point, we are talking about real money.

  I just realized in writing this that I have not run into a single former client who is glad they did the program. Yikes! I can think of people who are appreciative of this or that person and how they cared, but not about actually spending the money and not about the results. Now, this is a limited sample and is not scientific, so I’m sure I will run into people who are still very favorable. I’ll report on that when it happens. I live in this town. I’ll run into them eventually. And, I want to provide all sides of the story.

  ——————————-
  If LRX gives you published results saying that the program shows results, you’ll need to ask questions when confronted with this information:

  * Did the study involve 1-on-1 training by one trainer with one client?
  * Did the study involve such training three times per week or five times per week for one hour?
  * Did the study use the program that you are going to sign up for? ThinkRx ReadRx? MathRx?
  * Did the study test students after a period of time to ensure that the results lasted?
  * What external results exist for the 20,000 (or whatever) students who have been through the program and gotten such amazing results? Who did the external testing? Was it blind? Did it include any exceptions to the normal testing protocol? Was there any retesting or alteration of results as reported both by me and by other former LRX employees?

  Last I heard the studies that they were doing were with the computer program called Brain Skills. This wasn’t testing the in-center, one-on-one training that most people get in most centers (if most people bought the computer program centers would go out of business because it doesn’t cost enough).

  ————————–
  Also, I have said this before, you need to ensure that your own trainer has excellent results. I know that the above mother (and implied daughter) had an excellent trainer and still the results did not last. However, if you are going to have a chance with this, you have to have a very experienced trainer. In the center I was in, new trainers wasted a lot of time and money doing silly things that were not even close to correct — not having the child on beat, not having the child doing enough of the right procedures, not knowing how to do the procedures to get the most effect — it is a hard program to administer and you have to have experienced trainers to make it work. If you are going to have your child with a new trainer, you better have much the issues are much less severe than the average.

  If you click on this and you learn from it, click on it multiple times so that others will keep having this information. It needs to stay high in the rankings so others can have all of the information to make an informed decision.

  ————————————
  I still won’t tell you not to do LRX. I just want you to have ALL of the information that was kept from clients at my former center. I heard lies and untruths and half-truths spoken by the director on a daily basis, even when I believed in the program passionately (but never blindly). I saw trainers struggle to get children to train. I saw trainers do silly things. I saw children not make progress in the program. I also saw the contrary to all of this. Both sides are true, but new clients would only be told about the latter, never the former.

  I still after all of this think that the brain can change and some children need brain exercise to bring about that change; that just makes common sense to me. Just be careful how much you spend to achieve that… and make sure you have a plan to get there and stay there.

• FormerLRX:
  Are you available to chat privately?
  Thank you.
  A concerned person

• Thank you FormerLRX for all your insights. I have an assessment scheduled for later this week at the Charlottesville Va franchise. Do you know if they would do a consultation with only the test results first before talking about our concerns? Can they know enough from that to actually make recommendations? I wonder if that would be a way to be sure we were getting more than just a sales pitch.

• My daughter attended a learningrx center in Indiana in 2007. The only thing she was able to get from this program was a better self esteem but it certainly didn’t make her smarter. She attended a very large high school that was very qlicky and that was the biggest problem for her. If I had to do it again, yes I would, but learningrx definitely did not make her more successful in school!!

• Hi,

  I have been busy and I see I should have checked in sooner.

  I can answer any questions you have here. Just ask and I will check back in.

  Would a center do a consultation without you giving all of your information? Here are the things to consider:

  1. The center claims in advertizing that their assessment will help you understand the root issues with your child’s struggles. They claim this, but in my limited experience the director relies heavily on what you say. I may have said this before, but it is worth repeating, the director would discuss with others how to get a customer to sign up when some skill was high but needed to be low to sell the program. This is hard to say. I hope you are understanding. The director would not be understanding your child through the assessment results but instead figuring out how to use the results as proof that you need LRX. When the results didn’t prove it the gymnastics in logic were astounding.

  An example I remember was when word attack and auditory processing would be high, but parents reported anything to do with reading. What would be told to the parents was just completely made up at this point and it varied from case to case. As a fairly logical and ethical person, it drove me nuts.

  2. By not giving information, you are taking a bit of an adversarial role. But parents did this a number of times without being adversarial. I always thought these were the wisest parents. Just say, I want to understand the picture you get from the assessment so that I can see if we are talking about the same child. Or something like that.

  Something I also saw a mom do once is just be rather vague and say I don’t understand well and that is why I am paying for your expertise.

  If you read all of the above, you will have no surprises when you walk into the center. I have laid it all out for you. I only wish I could own the website and organize the information better and make sure I don’t repeat myself ten times. :)

  I won’t let this happen again where I get distracted by work. I will check in more.

• I am sitting in a vision therapy office. I watched the VISION THERAPY assessment process. I thought the testing was much more thorough. In fact, I told the doctor nothing and he clearly demonstrated the problems with my child’s vision. If you read the LRX sales materials they CLAIM to do this same thing. I did not see this at LRX.

  LRX = LearningRx = LearningRX = Learning RX

• I did not like Learning rx. Their methods are false and largely based upon guessing. I do not have any grudge against the trainer I worked with. The overall system is what gave me grief. After nearly two years of “jumping test results”, I quickly realized this was all a huge scam. Do not sign up, you will live to regret it!!!

• I have a family member who is in high school and her parents took her to be tested so they could help improve her ACT scores. WOW what a scam! The test “proved” that the high schooler who makes A-B-C’s at a private school is way below average and needs these $12,000 classes immediately to retrain her brain!! People, stay away from this place, it’s a scam!! Preying on young adults, parents and children – find another way to make money – low life’s!

• J Parker has run across what I saw, namely, that the center directors believe that EVERYONE needs brain training. J brings up something else important, the center I was in believed that brain training at Learning RX was the best way to improve ACT (or SAT) scores. This is very doubtful, because most students will raise their scores faster getting training in the test materials and test strategies and by doing practice exams. So, I can affirm what he/she says from an insider perspective. It did occur to me that Learning RX was the answer for EVERYONE who ever walked through the doors of the business.

  Which is why I have said and continue to say that it is important for parents to be in control of any engagement with this business. You may decide to use the service, but do so with an insiders understanding, not the one you get through marketing or through their manipulative sales process. Read the details of the sales process above. Read the details of the testing process above. Yes, genuine, sincere people can and do use manipulation and deception; they just call it “caring about you.”

  I guarantee you that this thread is the very best place to learn about this company and what they do or don’t do. Nothing else comes close. And, if you ask questions, I will eventually answer them, just almost never within one week.

  Keep the comments coming about your experiences.

• My 12 year old son took the assessment today. LRX was recommended by his IEP teacher, who also has a child attending. The director happened to be my son’s principal from a previous school, that did not work for him. I decided to check on complaints about the company before going to this weird consultation, since the opinion is completely biased. I am so glad I came across this forum. Now I feel like the consultation is a complete waste of time but I already shelled out $200. Any advice on getting money back or getting just the results and not hearing the bad advice?

• FormerLRX – thank you VERY much for your comments and explanation here! I’m so glad I found this discussion.

  I just scheduled assessment for my 16 yo daughter, who is actually doing very good in school, but has ADHD, and just started taking medications for this. I didn’t like the idea of medications – though I agreed to do it, as my daughter wants to do it, and I can’t take it away from her: she is stressed, and she needs help.

  But recently I happened to read the book “Let Me Hear Your Voice” by Catherine Maurice, how ABA training helped to recover her two autistic kids. I was extremely impressed with the book, and started thinking, that if brain training help with autism – it should be helpful with ADHD too. So my daughter’s brain would recover “proper wiring”, and she would not need medications anymore.

  That is how I found the LRX program. I still think that my daughter might benefit from the LRX training, but I am persuaded now that the training is not at all about what I’m looking for.

  Also I had no idea about the price – even ballpark. I would be willing to pay that kind of money for personal brain training – IF the point really was using brain plasticity to recover. But I don’t see that the LRX program is going to help us with that.

  Thank you very much again!

  I will discuss with my daughter if she would be willing to try the program you recommended here – Lumocity.

• Also – forgot to mention – the lady who I talked to on the phone to schedule appointments with – she asked me for the CREDIT CARD number. Is it their typical practice?

  I was unpleasantly surprised. LRX is not a hotel where you book the room by prepaid tariff :))) When I asked WHY does she need my credit card number at THAT point – she explained me that my credit card number will let her give me discount for the price of the assessment (from 299 to 199) (?) She also added some BS that they are trying to help the families to lower their cost. I still gave her the card number – I don’t care, it is not my checking. But I was disturbed enough at this point already – by the fact of such a weird request, and by the typo she made about helping families etc. What I read here just confirmed my suspicion – we don’t need to deal with our LRX.

• I have a dyslexic son (now aged 20) and a 16yo daughter who grasps new concepts, but seems to forget them the next day. I homeschooled both until 9th grade, teaching phonics using Spell to Write and Read. I didn’t know when I chose this curriculum, but it was what a dyslexia therapist would have used, according to Southern Methodist Univerisity’s testing facility. It doesn’t “fix” dyslexia, but it gives any student the best possible reading success. I’m now using it for adults who are illiterate and on an ESL adult who wants to read and write English. It’s not a “baby” program, so it’s acceptable to all ages. Also, it’s fairly inexpensive and materials can be used over and over.

  I had my “disorganized brain” daughter tested at LRX at age 13, and they prescribed a 24-week program for 10k. My husband is a physician, and we both noticed that the director used a lot of medical-like jargon in the pitch. We didn’t sign up, but since that time have heard from several people who were all pitched the exact same time length and price, no matter the diagnosis. Suspicious! We then had her tested by a PhD trained individual, and she prescribed some exercises and games that we could do at home to strengthen my daughter’s weak areas.

  For my daughter, we ended up using Lumosity.com (actually used it for all our brains) and loved it. We also just taught her some techniques to compensate for a disorganized brain. I’m convinced we all have brain glitches, so making lists, studying certain subjects a little more than other people and using specific workbooks to continue math practice is just part of life for most people. My daughter makes mostly A’s, with a few B’s, and we’re plenty happy with that.

  Just my two cents’ worth.

• Former LRX – Do you think there is a profile of the student for who LRX brain training is most likely to be successful? If so, what is that profile?

  How do we know you are not some disgruntled former employee just looking to get back at them with as much negative PR as you can put out there?

• I had a busy and tumultuous last year, and thought I would check in as the new year started. I expected there to be no activity. Boy was I wrong! I am sorry not to have been here but here are my answers one by one:

  1. @JoieNsk: The center I was at never asked for a credit card number before the assessment. It was certainly true that we had people not show up for assessments, but we never billed for that. It could be that the overall company now recommends that franchisees bill for no-show appointments. I don’t know. The reason given for needing your CC is a terrible one. In fact, most centers had discounted assessments most of the time. Assessments are simply a way to get into contact with families and turn them into customers.

  2. @mawwil: I tend to agree with what you said. The more distance I achieve between myself and LRX, the more I think I was brainwashed while I was there and it took time for me to recover. I think writing the above posts helped, but I still needed time. It is suspicious that every child who struggles with reading needs the exact same program for the exact same price. As I said, I saw how the ‘sausage was made’ and saw the director of my center figuring out with others how to justify each and every child needing the program.

  3. @Cgalyean: Read above because I answer both of your first two questions.. My goal has always been to provide parents a back office understanding of how LRX works and give insight based on what I saw. In my humble experience, $10K is a lot of money to most people. I think most families I worked with would agree with that — though there were a few notable exceptions in my memory.

  LRX is unique in that the product is extremely expensive and the product is mainly directed at struggling children and their struggling mom’s. The things I heard said by both LRX corporate and within my own center would shock most people, but the one I share above is absolutely true, “a mom who cries is a mom who buys.” I actually think the statement is true to a significant degree, but I think a mom who cries needs information to understand how she is at a disadvantage before she buys.

  When there is an imbalance of power between a salesman and a customer, the Internet provides a forum to equalize the balance. I have never said that a customer should not sign up with LRX. I have said that they should know the process they are in (phone -> assessment -> consultation -> training). I have also said that no one should believe the hype that practically everyone has been changed forever by 12 or 24 weeks of brain training. That hype was not true in the center where I worked, though I heard statements over and over again to this affect. Anyone can confirm much of the information I have provided. Someone out there do this and tell me your results.

  1. Call an LRX center saying you want information about your child who is a struggling reader.
  2. Try to gather information about the cost of the standard reading program. Ask for how much the training costs. In my center, you would not have received an answer.
  Instead, the person will be trained to express concern and compassion (good things to be sure), to get your information, and to sign you up for an assessment and consultation. They will be trained to defer questions to the consultation. They will be trained to defer to the expertise of the director (the person who will lead the consultation).

  3. Ask how many students have been through at least 12 weeks of training at the center in question. (They have this number pretty exactly in their database at the front desk.)
  4. Ask for the percentage of students who don’t make life-changing gains at the center.

  (I am interested in the answer to this question. At the center where I worked the only exceptions that were ever admitted put blame back on the parents for not being committed enough to the training, being late to training here or there by five minutes, or not doing home training correctly. Blah blah.}

  Share back to this list what you find. Mix it up with the questions so that we don’t all sound the same.

  Much of the rest of this information is also verifiable. The one thing I don’t think is easily verified is the cheating on testing. The only thing I can say there is read all the way back to the beginning. Others have seen this cheating and shared it before me. Cheating was only done on an as-needed basis and was pretty hush hush, of course. This is why I have said that if you do LRX training you need independent confirmation of improvements from an objective source.

  If anyone has information that what I share above has changed, please share. We want the truth in this posting. Please take the time to share.

  And to all who read this, have a very Happy New Year in 2016!

• I just had a teacher ask me about two boys that were tested by Learning RX. The mother of these two boys said they wanted her to spend $24,000+ for 32 weeks of training for both of them. Absolutely impossible for these parents to do. I told the teacher to tell the mom to look at lumosity.com which costs $7.00 month for a full year. I’m also giving the teacher some ideas for how to train memory, math skills, logic.

  If you have scores from cognitive testing, post them here and I’ll give ideas for what to do with your own child to help them. I’m as good as anyone at understanding what the scores are saying — and what LRX will say that the scores are saying. I can give you an idea what LRX will say you need.

  Both of these children had very low memory scores. Other scores were low, but these two scores need to be the focus first. For example, these children had low scores in math and math is a good memory exercise. But anything memory is good. Here are four ideas for working memory:

  1. Create columns of random numbers from 0 to 9. Get a metronome and set it to 120 BPM (beats per minute). Have the child add 1 to each number down a column on every other beat. When the child can do that perfectly on a couple columns of 10 numbers, then work on adding two’s. Each day, start with 1 and move on to the next numbers until all of the numbers are mastered.

  2. With the same number columns created in example 1, give the student numbers on every other beat and have the student recite them back on every other beat. So…. the teacher might say 1…3… and the student will answer 1… 3… and then the teacher will say… 4… 9… and the student will repeat. Start with two numbers and work up to more and more digits.

  3. Do the same exercise but have the child give back the numbers in reverse order. Teacher gives 2… 7… and the student responds 7… 2… all on every other beat @ 120BPM.

  4. Create a list of common nouns. mom. clown. dad. television. Make sure your list has at list 100 words. Now give your student lists of words on every other beat and the student should give them back on every other beat. Teach the student to create visual pictures to connect the pictures. mom becomes a clown. the clown jumps on dad’s shoulder’s. dad is shown on television. etc… give different lists each time.

  There are a million ways to work on memory. The idea that LRX added to all of this was doing these things on a beat. A good idea that is not worth $24,000 of therapy, IMO. You can even come up with other ideas pretty simply. Do 2 or 3 with sounds (there are 43/44 sounds in the English language — google for the list or read Dianne McGuinness’ book).

  Do the exercises every day for at least 20 minutes. Keep making them harder. Add new exercises for variety, but keep doing the above until you can do these exercises well. 10 digits forward. 6 backward. sequences of 20 or 25 nouns. add all digits from 0 to 9. On the first exercise, making the metronome slower makes things easier and making it faster makes things harder. On memory exercises where you give lists, making the metronome slower, makes it harder.

  To make things fun, decide on levels and call them after belts like they do in martial arts. When your child can add 1 to every number on every other beat at 120 BPM call that white belt. Look up the belts. Then when you go through the same ones at 140BPM call that white belt second level or something. Whatever works. Children like levels and to feel like they are moving forward.

  If you want more ideas, ask. If you have success, share it. If you try but struggle, ask questions. I am happy to help. LearningRx home office folks say that even a very poor trainer can get good results with their exercises. You just need good exercises and ideas how to make them gradually harder, plus diligence. I can help you invent both. Or you can use Lumosity.com or some combination of both.

  Be patient. I will check. Unless we start a conversation, I’m not going to answer immediately. Just post and be patient.

• I just took my ADHD son to have an assessment and have already seen some of the things mentioned in this post like insisting that my husband attend the consultation. I had a coupon and received a discount on the test, so I don’t feel like I have stepped off any ledges yet, but I am so thankful I followed my gut and found this website.

  I am FLOORED, I wanted to expect better, I hoped for better, LRX is clearly in the business of profit, the children are simply the emotional chess pieces used against their parents.

  THANK YOU Former LRX for the incredible detail and feedback, you not only saved me money, you saved the inevitable guilt I would have felt for not signing my son up for this program.

• Hello, WorriedMom. Thanks for posting. ADD and ADHD can have other root causes besides mental strength. Consider nutrition. Consider the book ‘Willpower’ by John Tierney. Consider exercises that develop the brain such as provided by Lumosity. [Personal opinion, ADD/ADHD drugs don’t address the root issues and harm a child; I avoid them.]

  Lumosity addresses working memory and attention skills with a variety of activites/exercises/procedures (whatever they call them). The key is your child to be diligent and this is true no matter what do to do help him or her.

  I have shared ideas above for how to train memory. Attention skills are really speed skills that require the student to focus on one thing while ignoring others. For example, using the stroop chart (google it) with color words. Here are examples of what you can do with this chart to train attention skills:

  1. Have your child read the color of the text instead of what the word says (on beat every other beat starting at 100 beats per minute and increasing to 200 beats per minute in increments of 20 beats per minute). Here the student pays attention to the color of the text while ignoring what the word says.

  2. Have your child alternate reading the color of the word with reading the actual word on beat. Same range of metronome speeds. You don’t have to be all done with the previous to start this one. Mix things up.

  3. Tell your student to do either of the previous while you distract him or her. Then as he or she does the exercise, tap the table, say funny things, bump his or her shoulder, wave your hands in front of the page. This is fun and a challenge and helps to learn to ignore the distraction. Keep track of your student being successful at the various metronome speeds with distractions.

  4. Have your child do a mental activity while doing either of the previous. For example, have him or her give the number of words written in green ink at the end of the line (on the normal beat) before going on to the next line. This makes it harder to pay attention and divides attention. This is hard at first, but even harder mental activities are possible if you as a parent/teacher are good at beat. for example, after the first and second words on a line — on the offbeat — you give two small numbers; your child gives the sum or difference or product at the end of the line on the normal beat before continuing to the next line. Keep track of your student doing mental activities at the various metronome speeds. This is progress!

  If you are ambitious, create your own color words chart. Put underlines beneath some of the words. Put an asterisk after some. Keep these additions in the same color as the word being marked. You can use these as mental activities where you ask your child to do different things with these words. For example, if the word has an asterisk, say the word rather than the color of the ink.

  The stroop test is a common psychology test in the public domain. Google it. LRX does similar exercises to this in their center but also uses these exercises as promotions at all manner of activities such as at school fairs and county fairs. I did this with people at such events, so all of this is in the public domain. Lumosity or LRX owns the rights to its own copyrighted versions of its own training materials, but not to the Stroop test or the use of a metronome or the exercises that we can imagine and organize using the stroop test. So, feel free to imagine and create new exercises. I will keep my eye out for other ways to do things and share as I come across them.

  By the by, I personally am able to do the stroop test exercises at 240 BPM every other beat. When I started, a long time ago now, I had a hard time with doing these on beat or hearing fast beats. My mind got better. But I will say this, no matter how strong my mind has become at all these exercises, I have never stopped struggling to pay attention. When reading a book, it is hard to pay attention and ignore distractions. When I work, I have to shutdown email or it distracts me. When I listen to an audiobook, I sometimes have to rewind to hear what I missed because my mind wandered. The longer I live, the more I think that attention is a matter of the will as much as an ability of the brain — probably even more so. My will to pay attention is weaker than my ability to pay attention.

  An exercise: Sit in any worship service for 1.5 hours and on a small piece of paper make a mark every time your mind is paying attention to something outside of worship. I am not saying that you shouldn’t pray for your best friend during the prayer of the pastor — that is part of worship. I am talking about thinking about where your car keys are — what you will make for lunch — whether the person behind you has noticed the mark on your shoes — or whatever else. When I do this exercise, I am embarrassed by how much I struggle to pay attention. This is not for lack of mental abilities — my working memory and attention skills are rather high compared to all norms when tested. I certainly want to pay attention, but it is always a struggle — almost every Sunday.

  If you want a history lesson on attention skills in America in a book that does not set out to be such, read “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. Then compare modern presidential ‘debates’ to those debates enjoyed by our forefathers of the 19th century. Amazing difference.

  I wish you well with your child. Tell him or her that the entire world wants our attention, but it is something we have a right to withhold from the world so that we can attend to our school work, the book we are reading, the conversation we are in, the person across from us at the table, the preaching of the Word, the paper we are writing, or whatever — and that even realizing this it will always be something we have to be diligent to pursue.

  Peace and love.

• LearningRx has relied on false and/or illegal information along with predatory and immoral marketing to deceive investors into the system and clients into their programs. It is a family business operated by complete crooks

  Founder: Ken Gibson (failed eye doctor)
  Daughter: Tanya Mitchell (business undegrad)
  Daughter: Kim Hanson (no apparent degree)
  Son in Law: Dean Tenpas (undegrad and no relevant experience)
  Son: Brett Gibson
  It has also employed his brother’s in the past
  It is not a meritocracy
  It cannot retain anyone with credentials to peddle their attack on science, which is a requirement for their marketing

  They were recently FINED BY THE FTC for their false claims. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of how these people operate

  https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2016/05/marketers-one-one-brain-training-programs-settle-ftc-charges