LearningRX Complaints: Falsified Test Results

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• 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.

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  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).

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  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.

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  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.