WATERLOO - For Alexus Williams, life as a third-grade student at Lincoln Elementary School in Waterloo was a daily struggle. She couldn't keep up with her peers. She was reading at a first-grade level. She'd forget what she was supposed to do within 10 minutes of hearing directions. Her mother, Kim, said daily homework sessions were highly stressful for the whole family. Discussions with her teacher didn't resolve the problems.

"They didn't have the help for her and they can't do one-on-one - there are a lot of students in her classroom," explained Kim. "There was no help for her at that point."

The Williams family looked into tutoring, but it was expensive and subject-specific. Alexus needed help in all subjects. That's when Alexus' father came across an ad for the Learning Efficiency Program in Waterloo. The center bills its services as "academic therapy" that retrains the brain's processing functions.

"Classic tutoring basically works with the content - it gives people content. Our program teaches the brain how to use the content," said executive director Marlene Krueger.

Alexus spent more than two years participating in LEP four days a week. During her one-hour sessions, she would work on the computer and with instructors to see, hear, say and write a series of phonetically similar words. This multisensory approach teaches the brain to decode, store and retrieve information automatically, thereby improving the student's ability to process and retain new information, according to Krueger.

Kim said it worked. "Within three months, we saw a total turnaround. It wasn't in all areas that we saw right away, but in the majority of areas."

As a current fifth-grader, Alexus recently graduated from LEP and is reading at a sixth-grade level. Her writing has improved dramatically, as has her overall confidence. She regularly does her homework without help from her parents, Kim said.

LEP works with about 25 students like Alexus at any given time and has helped nearly 300 students over the last 13 years. It recently added a math component to its offerings to more directly target numerical processing deficiencies, Krueger added.

A few miles away, struggling students in the office of Dr. Kurt Kuhn spent a therapy session playing Whac-A-Mole and hopscotch. While it all seemed like fun to the kids, the games exercise the brain by rebuilding neurological connections that are weak, according to Kuhn, one of a handful of chiropractic neurologists in Iowa.

Kuhn says learning disorders like dyslexia and other syndromes such as attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder are variable symptoms of a common neurological cause, which he calls functional disconnection syndrome. In short, FDS means the connections between different parts of the brain and nervous system needed to perform a given task - like reading - are weak.

"Currently (society) looks at most of these things as educational or behavioral problems," said Kuhn, who also holds a Ph.D. in education. "I'm looking at it from the neurological perspective - what's working and what's not working and what can we do to improve those organs."

Once the underlying brain function problem is diagnosed, Kuhn designs an individual therapy program to strengthen the brain's connections and synchronize the left and right sides of the brain.

Kuhn's results vary from enhancing a student's ability to function in the classroom to reducing the need for medication to significantly improving grades. Kuhn documented one patient's results in his doctoral dissertation: a ninth-grader who, after four months of therapy, improved his grade point average from 1.5 to 3.76, finished high school in three years and discontinued all medications.

Once Kuhn's neurological work to boost the brain is under way, students often receive additional help from other professionals, such as a tutor to close the gap on lagging coursework. "Concurrent care gets the best results. Each builds on the other," Kuhn said.

For more information, contact the Learning Efficiency Program at 292-2095 or Dr. Kurt Kuhn at 236-1000 or www.drkurtkuhn.com.