Our History

The Beginning
LearningRx is a thriving franchise company with centers spread across the nation. We provide cognitive skills brain training to hundreds of students of all ages every business day. As with all business stories, how LearningRx looks today cannot fully reveal the time, energy, money, and vision that got all of us to this present level of success. To see behind the scenes, you have to go back to 1985, in Appleton, Wisconsin.

A group of professionals (including Dr. Ken Gibson, the future founder of LearningRx) met to talk about learning. Current educational ideas were all on the table for discussion and evaluation. Over the ensuing months, other professional input and further discussions led to the beginning of a new way to look at learning problems.

To understand Dr. Gibson’s contribution to this discussion, you have to go back even earlier in his life. He was a struggling reader all through school. Perseverance led him to overcome those barriers and enjoy a successful professional career. This gave Dr. Gibson the opportunity to work with children who were laboring under similar struggles to learn or read. Dr. Gibson questioned, “What dynamic would need to change to make learning easier, faster, and better?” This former struggling reader was now devouring everything in print about “how we learn”.

By now, the Gibsons had a “learning lab” of their own at home. Their oldest daughter, Kim (now a Master Trainer, Training Coach, and VP of Support and Training Services for LearningRx) became the object of many of the training theories Dr. Gibson was researching and developing. Kim’s experiences led to the beginning of a system of preschools, simply because existing preschools were not offering this type of training. These schools were among the first in the nation to carry an advisory board consisting of psychiatrists and psychologists committed to exploring the potential of developing a program that would enhance mental skills to accelerate learning. The results were amazing! Kids entering Kindergarten were functioning at the 2nd grade level.

Preschool success led to the opening of an early, multi-disciplinary remedial learning center. Innovations that flowed from this experience included using the metronome to add integration and intensity to training, and the use of standardized testing both before and after training to identify individual skill gains and measure the effectiveness of the procedures. All these successes put Dr. Gibson in a position to maximize his involvement and influence in those 1985 discussions. His experiences continued to grow and included standard educational reviews, training development, and pioneering work with professional athletes about the mental and focus aspects of their game performance.

First Training System
1986 marked the development of the first training system that can be said to connect directly to modern LearningRx training: VIP (Vision Information Processing). This was one-on-one visual processing training that featured progressive sequencing, feedback, and intense loading. The VIP results represented a major breakthrough in training efficiency. Gains that had taken 18 months using the training available in 1985 were now achieved in only three months—an astounding 600% improvement! Professionals began to take notice. In November of 1987, Dr. Gibson began training other doctors in his methodology and new programs that were being developed. During that time, over 2,000 health professionals were trained in Dr. Gibson’s various programs.

Behind the scenes, the study, research and discussions continued. Professionals who added expertise in the areas of auditory processing and memory joined the team. Research and development was so active that training manuals were printed on demand so that the latest changes could be included. It was an exciting time of progress and discovery. In 1994, a broader program called PACE (Processing and Cognitive Enhancement) was launched. PACE was made available to a larger audience of educators and doctors.

Testing was upgraded to nationally recognized tools like the Woodcock Johnson tests, the TONI2 test, the CTOPP (Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing), and the Detroit Test of Learning Attitudes. The move to include educators (and not restrict the training to doctors) was a significant development. Finally, the training was squarely on the front lines of education and was beginning to make a broader impact where it counted—in the lives of struggling students.

In 2000, a reading program was developed to meet the need for reading-specific training. This program took basic auditory processing training to new levels. It also addressed the very common need for a more effective reading system. Reading results were amazing. Multi-year gains were the norm for those students who completed this reading training. PACE training was enhanced and led to the development of ThinkRx and MathRx training. A preschool module called LiftOff followed.

Continued Success
In 2002, two local businessmen, and friends of Dr. Gibson, tested the programs on themselves and on a young adult son. Both experienced amazing results. They encouraged Dr. Gibson to open a local center to test the business viability of the training if it was made available directly to the public rather than only through doctors. In August of 2002, he opened a brain training center in Colorado Springs. By the end of that year, the training center model had begun to prove itself.

The new center helped 6 times as many families as any of our independent providers had reached in that time frame. LearningRx was born! Seven centers were added in 2003, and the system continues to grow. The growth in itself is less important than how that growth enables LearningRx to fulfill its mission: to help as many struggling students as possible experience learning and reading success.