Slimey Web Tricks are Central to the Industry’s Marketing Strategy ~ to wit:

Most parents turn to the web first when they are having trouble in the family. This is why so much marketing strategy for the TTI programs is focused on getting as many eyeballs to sites that will lead them to the programs. I have google alerts on all things TTI, including “educational consultants.” Ed. cons. are not regulated or licensed, they have no special training except to work with a Ed. Con. who’s been in the business. The TTI is a gold mine for the ones who get hooked up with Aspen or other large programs. Every referral is approximately $3,000. They are supposed to do or have done appropriate assessments of the “troubled teen.” Some of them actually do this, however it is my understanding and personal experience that most of them who refer to the programs don’t do any assessment, let alone meet with the teen. They have a professional organization with minimal membership requirements and $600/annual dues, the Independent Education Consultants Association (IECA)

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
The professional membership category is for consultants who have demonstrated a professional mastery with years of experience. Annual dues for Professional Membership are $600.

To qualify for professional membership, consultants must have:

* A master’s degree or higher from an accredited institution. Alternatively, an applicant may demonstrate comparable educational training or appropriate professional experience.
* Three years of experience in counseling or admissions, with a minimum of one year of independent practice.
* Advised a minimum of 50 students while he or she was employed in an institutional setting or working in private practice.
* A minimum requirement of evaluative campus visits within each specialty area:
College 50 visits; Boarding/Day Schools 25 visits; LD Schools/Programs 25 visits; Troubled Teen Programs 25 visits
* Professional references from at least two college or independent school admissions officers or psychologists/ counselors with whom the applicant has worked in the admission process. In addition, a third reference from an IECA member, another educational professional, or a client family is required.

As far as I know, an applicant for membership simply declares that s/he meets the requirements, which are very minimal anyway.

They are well known for plastering the web with bogus sites that will lead you to do business with them. Here’s one of a zillion examples.

WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO? EDUCATING YOUR TROUBLED TEEN

First of all the article is written very poorly and doesn’t identify the organization or ed. con. behind the site. The article begins in typical fashion describing the dilemmas of parents coping with troubled teens. Then s/he uses a book by Dave Marcus, titled What It Takes to Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble as great as How Four of Them Got Out, an account of time he spent at an AEG program in Massachusetts called the Swift River Academy, claiming that AEG gave him full access to staff and “students.” This journalist has no background in psychology or education and since he wrote the book he’s been doing “parenting workshops” which he’s clearly unqualified for and I don’t doubt he promotes the programs, probably Aspen’s in particular. Does he get any kickback? Do ed cons. get kickbacks to make these referrals? I deduce that they do. Here’s the plug for the book:

Currently multiform hundred programs exist, portion 10,000 to 20,000 students annually. Pulitzer Prize-winning bard David L. Marcus looked during the single such module in his brand new book, What It Takes to Pull Me Through: Why Teenagers Get in Trouble as great as How Four of Them Got Out. His investigate of the formidable universe of uneasy teenagers was conducted during the Academy during Swift River, an romantic expansion propagandize in horse opera Massachusetts. The success of his book is demonstrative of the flourishing seductiveness in as great as direct for programs to offer the flourishing shred of America’s twenty-nine million adolescents.

It gets worse. ABC aired a reality show called Brat Camp which took place at Sagewalk, the AEG wilderness program mentioned in posts below in reference to the death of a 16 yo boy in the wilderness.

Nor has the materialisation been mislaid upon the media. ABC’s being form Brat Camp shows the choices faced by 9 family groups traffic with out-of-control teenagers with problems similar to ADHD, drug addiction, promiscuity as great as fighting. Each chooses to send their teenager to SageWalk, the forest propagandize in farming Oregon, anticipating which after the 50-day module is over they’ll get behind the immature kids they once knew.

Their reference to their teens as “out of control” and “immature.” It is nearly always true that all TTI marketing degrades teens with these descriptors, hardly ever making reference to the family system that almost always has something to do with any child’s behavior, for better or worse.