The previous reviews of this company highlighting its horrible workplace culture and treatment of women is absolutely correct. Further to the point as a client, you should 100% take your business elsewhere. The owner does not care about your student. To his credit, he's a wonderful salesman -- due to his incredible ability to lie. He will tell every client exactly what they want to hear regardless of whether he can accurately or even ethically. There is no one on staff with the proper credentials to work with students with learning disorders however he will tell parents of children with LD that the center has the certified people and tools at hand. He once tried to force a former tutor to work with a highly autistic child. She expressed to him that she wasn't comfortable doing so and he told her she had to anyway (she ultimately left the company over this issue). Other examples: tutors are frequently paired with students even if the tutor doesn't have the proper background to tutor the student for that subject, such as tasking tutors to teach students Italian or Latin even though the tutors had no background in those languages and only knew Spanish (the owner said it was "close enough" and the tutor said he just winged it -- the client paid $135 per session).
To speak to the sexism: it has been an issue since the founding of the company. There has always been an illusion of female representation as the owner tends to only hire women for managerial roles. However, the women who are in said leadership roles are treated very poorly and have very little to no influence. Their ideas are not heard or appreciated. One director who worked there for almost 10 years was yelled at by the owner in front of other employees to the point where she cried. He also gossiped and spoke ill of her behind her back to staff members. Very few women have enjoyed employment with this company (for the ones who have: they were always tutors who worked part-time and didn't have to experience some of the more nuanced problems as the ones in leadership roles did). The owner favors men and is easily persuaded to give raises or offer favors to men, but not to women of the same caliber. He is blatantly disrespectful, once asking one of the receptionists to always open and sniff his sandwiches to ensure there were never any onions on it (this woman had a Master's degree and felt humiliated). Further, he is over-bearing and mistrusting toward women; again, never taking ideas expressed by women at face-value -- but equally accepting the same idea if later presented by a man. Amongst tutors, there have been many instances of sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. Finally, there's no real room for growth as a female within this company. While women have held leadership roles, the owner takes advantage of them by issuing them unrealistic work loads (and sometimes unethical work tasks) and by treating them poorly by speaking down to them.
Clients: you will be far better off going to another tutoring company or hiring a private tutor. While many of the tutors are good, some of them are not and you will never be able to request "the best" as the owner will lie to you and tell you what you want to hear. Further, as stated above your student may work with a tutor who isn't completely qualified to tutor in certain subjects or with students with certain learning issues.
Prospective employees: if you are a woman you will fight every day for respect. People of all genders: you will be worked to the bone, given far more work than is realistic and you'll never be paid what you're worth. You have little to no benefits (non-exempt prospectives: there are no incentives, poor healthcare and awful PTO/vacation options).
BOTTOM LINE: this company is morally corrupt and likely soon to be out of business. Beware and take your business elsewhere or look elsewhere for employment.
If you are a parent considering sending your child to Groza Learning Center, a prospective employee, or a former employee considering joining a class action lawsuit against them, you all deserve to know the truth about the place. It appears that Scott Groza has gone to great lengths to hide the following about Groza Learning Center, and I will provide evidence of each claim as a well-documented, legitimate grievance. In order:
1. Overcharging of parents for the types of services rendered.
2. Systematic discrimination against female employees.
3. Suspicious reviews organized to hide negative comments.
4. Bad company culture and work environment.
Claim #1: Overcharging of parents for the types of services rendered.
Parents are routinely charged $100-250/hour for services like homework help, tutoring, and test-prep. Meanwhile the employees are paid about $15-20/hour.
This type of 10-20X markup is quite high, especially since the main services are being provided by the tutors themselves. Furthermore, tutors are often mismatched with clients. Why? There are many theories, but the most reasonable conclusion is that the goal is to fill slots to maximize revenue. Here are some reviews with links to the original sources:
"Parents are charged over $100 per 50 minute session, while the tutors see about $15 of that, no matter their experience level or skills. Further, the tutors are forced to tutor in subjects they know nothing about. For example, I had to tutor Latin, while I have never once had a Latin class"
"PARENTS! Not all of the tutors have experience in what they are asked to do. I was asked to tutor a middle school kid in a foreign language that I didn't even know. That was an uncomfortable tutoring session..."
"I was looking for a tutor for my 8 year old and was quoted $125/hr by the front desk. I heard this was a prestigious place so I asked who would be tutoring my child. I looked up the young woman on linkedin, who by all accounts seemed very nice, but she only had less than 1 year work experience and was just out of school"
"The worst tutor center I have ever been to. While the owner, Scott Groza, was incredibly nice and friendly at first, it was all a farce. He promised my child would be paired with a tutor that knew the subjects and could give my son Chase the attention he needs, especially for Latin. However, I soon found this not to be true."
"Advocate for the tutors, for christ's sake. We pay your bills. We do all the work and get an insulting hourly wage"
Claim #2: Systematic discrimination against female employees
There are many comments online from employees of the Groza Learning Center complaining that Scott Groza prefers male to female employees. To provide background, in the United States there is a requirement of equal pay for equal work. More recently, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 further protects the rights of women in the workplace.
"Scott not only pays guys more than girls, but he also has favorites and they are all guys. Example: When a guy left the center for something new, Scott threw him a party. When a girl left the center for something new, Scott ignored it and we threw her a secret party in the back."
"Every single female tutor is paid LESS than every single male tuor, and when women from the office approached Scott, he called women overly emotional and ignored our fight for equality. He lies to parents, employees, and is a secretive, destructive man." (See image for source, is currently cached)
Claim #3: Suspicious reviews organized to hide negative comments
Following a number of negative reviews to expose the legitimate grievances above (and claim #4 which we will visit shortly), Scott Groza retained lawyer Aaron Minc to repair his reputation (i.e. to hide it from prospective clients). Here are a collection of "reviews" which are highly suspicious.
First, Groza Learning Center released a book called "Roots Booster" on Amazon which has five "5-star" customer reviews. Compare this to the business reviews left for the learning center itself. The reviewers "Ellen LaFlesche-Christian", "Angie Lynn", "Kira Thompson", and more were all given free gifts with some monetary value (mostly free copies) and instructed to cross-post their review, almost verbatim, to the business address on google in order to hide negative reviews. These are not legitimate reviews for Groza Learning Center itself, and were clearly orchestrated as part of an intentional campaign. Otherwise why would nearly a half-dozen individuals all cross-post from Amazon to Google after receiving an incentive with monetary value?
Second, in response to mounting negative reviews on glassdoor (following the confrontation referenced in claim #2), someone posted numerous reviews saying how great of a place it was to work. Whereas the beginning posts referred to Groza Learning Center as a "hell hole", there were nearly a dozen posts within a short period all with 5 stars. These posts contain strange language referring to "facility costs" justifying their low salary (which tutors would not be privvy to and why would you list a low salary as a positive?), saying Scott has a "great business mind," and other targeted keywords.
Overcharging parents at the Groza Learning Center:
If you are a parent considering sending your child to Groza Learning Center, there are a few things you must know.
1. You will be paying $125-250 per hour.
2. The tutors of your children will only be making $15-20.
3. The tutors of your children will switch often, since employees quit on a monthly basis due to the working conditions (see below regarding toxic company culture).
4. You may be paired with a tutor who has minimal experience in what your child requires assistance with. Rather than finding the best tutor for your child, the Groza Learning Center will try to fill the time slot as quickly as possible. For example, if your child needs help with spanish, they may pair them with a mathematics tutor just so they can bill for the hours.
5. In summary, you will be getting ripped off. You might think you're paying $125-250 for a superb specialist, but in reality you're just paired with a tutor with little-to-no work experience or specialization to fill up billable hours.
Toxic company culture at the Groza Learning Center:
At Groza Learning center, the only goal is to make money for Scott and Christy Groza and not to keep employees happy or to do what's best for the children who need to learn. Rather than take my word for it, the following are direct quotes from the employee handbook since 2011. Decide for yourself if this is the right place to work or send your children:
"No lesson planning should be done 'day of' or right before your session with the student."
Technically this is how it should be, but this policy is swept under the rug. Scott Groza would rather you have more students, than spend time preparing to deliver the best lesson to the ones you have.
"How you leave is just as important to us as the work you do while you are with us. This is reflected in recommendations to future employers or lack thereof."
The Groza Learning Center threatens you before you even start working for them. Additionally, they have incredibly petty language to insinuate that you would be perpetually unemployed. I have NEVER heard of such an embarassing, unprofessional, and disgraceful attitude from an employer.
"Your social plans mean nothing us."
Imagine working for a company that says this to you. Now imagine that company is responsible for your child's academic future.
"...when you ask for a raise you are asking us to take a paycut."
The Groza Learning center charges parents between $125 to $250 per hour and only pays the tutors an average of $15-20 per hour. Overall, they probably make between $2-3 million per year. Again, if Groza cared about quality they would pay tutors more, but instead they insist on maintaining high margins and high turnover. Also, as a parent, why would you pay $125-250 to access tutors who are willing to work for $15-20? The only explanation is that the parents are getting ripped off by the greed of the Grozas.
"At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility for the company, the students, and our personal reputation (yes, the reputation of Scott and Christy Groza) is on our shoulders. We accept nothing less from ourserlves than to own a thriving business regardless of world economic affairs."
Like I said before, the #1 goal of Groza is to make money for the Grozas. The goal, "at the end of the day" is not to make a difference in children's lives, or to have the best learning outcomes possible, but to make money for Scott and Christy Groza. Imagine how important your children are to you. Do you want to send them to a place that prioritizes their own finances above and beyond the success of your family?
"...our decisions are always made by taking into account many details that you are not privvy to and ultimately for the best interest and survival of the company."
"We know that the... tone of this leter is unconventional, BUT, its design is to set you up for SUCESS (sic)."
A learning center capitalizes the word "success" and mispells it in their employment documents. Furthermore, these documents were created in 2011 and they saw no need to update or fix them. Even stranger, they mispelled "unprofessional" as "unconventional."
"If you are uncomfortable with the philosophy as stated above, do not hesitate to put in your resignation immediately. We are more than happy to part ways."
Again, can you believe that this type of language exists in an onboarding employment document? Think of the worst boss you've had in your life - would they say this to you on your first day on the job? Pushing this aside, it says a tremendous amount about the company culture. What's particularly worrisome is putting your child's future (and your hard-earned money) in the hands of people who think it's acceptable, as a human being, to treat and speak to others in such a manner.
Scott and Christy Groza. If you are reading this, please "do not hestitate" to try and refute the facts above. These quotes are directly written by you "Copyright 2011 Groza Learning Center. All Rights Reserved." To any parents reading this, there are plenty of smart and talented tutors and tutoring companies in the LA area that would have your childrens' best interest at heart.
Groza Learning Center Reviews
Terrible Company
The previous reviews of this company highlighting its horrible workplace culture and treatment of women is absolutely correct. Further to the point as a client, you should 100% take your business elsewhere. The owner does not care about your student. To his credit, he's a wonderful salesman -- due to his incredible ability to lie. He will tell every client exactly what they want to hear regardless of whether he can accurately or even ethically. There is no one on staff with the proper credentials to work with students with learning disorders however he will tell parents of children with LD that the center has the certified people and tools at hand. He once tried to force a former tutor to work with a highly autistic child. She expressed to him that she wasn't comfortable doing so and he told her she had to anyway (she ultimately left the company over this issue). Other examples: tutors are frequently paired with students even if the tutor doesn't have the proper background to tutor the student for that subject, such as tasking tutors to teach students Italian or Latin even though the tutors had no background in those languages and only knew Spanish (the owner said it was "close enough" and the tutor said he just winged it -- the client paid $135 per session).
To speak to the sexism: it has been an issue since the founding of the company. There has always been an illusion of female representation as the owner tends to only hire women for managerial roles. However, the women who are in said leadership roles are treated very poorly and have very little to no influence. Their ideas are not heard or appreciated. One director who worked there for almost 10 years was yelled at by the owner in front of other employees to the point where she cried. He also gossiped and spoke ill of her behind her back to staff members. Very few women have enjoyed employment with this company (for the ones who have: they were always tutors who worked part-time and didn't have to experience some of the more nuanced problems as the ones in leadership roles did). The owner favors men and is easily persuaded to give raises or offer favors to men, but not to women of the same caliber. He is blatantly disrespectful, once asking one of the receptionists to always open and sniff his sandwiches to ensure there were never any onions on it (this woman had a Master's degree and felt humiliated). Further, he is over-bearing and mistrusting toward women; again, never taking ideas expressed by women at face-value -- but equally accepting the same idea if later presented by a man. Amongst tutors, there have been many instances of sexual harassment and gender-based discrimination. Finally, there's no real room for growth as a female within this company. While women have held leadership roles, the owner takes advantage of them by issuing them unrealistic work loads (and sometimes unethical work tasks) and by treating them poorly by speaking down to them.
Clients: you will be far better off going to another tutoring company or hiring a private tutor. While many of the tutors are good, some of them are not and you will never be able to request "the best" as the owner will lie to you and tell you what you want to hear. Further, as stated above your student may work with a tutor who isn't completely qualified to tutor in certain subjects or with students with certain learning issues.
Prospective employees: if you are a woman you will fight every day for respect. People of all genders: you will be worked to the bone, given far more work than is realistic and you'll never be paid what you're worth. You have little to no benefits (non-exempt prospectives: there are no incentives, poor healthcare and awful PTO/vacation options).
BOTTOM LINE: this company is morally corrupt and likely soon to be out of business. Beware and take your business elsewhere or look elsewhere for employment.
If you are a parent considering sending your child to Groza Learning Center, a prospective employee, or a former employee considering joining a class action lawsuit against them, you all deserve to know the truth about the place. It appears that Scott Groza has gone to great lengths to hide the following about Groza Learning Center, and I will provide evidence of each claim as a well-documented, legitimate grievance. In order:
1. Overcharging of parents for the types of services rendered.
2. Systematic discrimination against female employees.
3. Suspicious reviews organized to hide negative comments.
4. Bad company culture and work environment.
Claim #1: Overcharging of parents for the types of services rendered.
Parents are routinely charged $100-250/hour for services like homework help, tutoring, and test-prep. Meanwhile the employees are paid about $15-20/hour.
This type of 10-20X markup is quite high, especially since the main services are being provided by the tutors themselves. Furthermore, tutors are often mismatched with clients. Why? There are many theories, but the most reasonable conclusion is that the goal is to fill slots to maximize revenue. Here are some reviews with links to the original sources:
"Parents are charged over $100 per 50 minute session, while the tutors see about $15 of that, no matter their experience level or skills. Further, the tutors are forced to tutor in subjects they know nothing about. For example, I had to tutor Latin, while I have never once had a Latin class"
"PARENTS! Not all of the tutors have experience in what they are asked to do. I was asked to tutor a middle school kid in a foreign language that I didn't even know. That was an uncomfortable tutoring session..."
"I was looking for a tutor for my 8 year old and was quoted $125/hr by the front desk. I heard this was a prestigious place so I asked who would be tutoring my child. I looked up the young woman on linkedin, who by all accounts seemed very nice, but she only had less than 1 year work experience and was just out of school"
"The worst tutor center I have ever been to. While the owner, Scott Groza, was incredibly nice and friendly at first, it was all a farce. He promised my child would be paired with a tutor that knew the subjects and could give my son Chase the attention he needs, especially for Latin. However, I soon found this not to be true."
"Advocate for the tutors, for christ's sake. We pay your bills. We do all the work and get an insulting hourly wage"
Claim #2: Systematic discrimination against female employees
There are many comments online from employees of the Groza Learning Center complaining that Scott Groza prefers male to female employees. To provide background, in the United States there is a requirement of equal pay for equal work. More recently, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 further protects the rights of women in the workplace.
"Scott not only pays guys more than girls, but he also has favorites and they are all guys. Example: When a guy left the center for something new, Scott threw him a party. When a girl left the center for something new, Scott ignored it and we threw her a secret party in the back."
"Every single female tutor is paid LESS than every single male tuor, and when women from the office approached Scott, he called women overly emotional and ignored our fight for equality. He lies to parents, employees, and is a secretive, destructive man." (See image for source, is currently cached)
Claim #3: Suspicious reviews organized to hide negative comments
Following a number of negative reviews to expose the legitimate grievances above (and claim #4 which we will visit shortly), Scott Groza retained lawyer Aaron Minc to repair his reputation (i.e. to hide it from prospective clients). Here are a collection of "reviews" which are highly suspicious.
First, Groza Learning Center released a book called "Roots Booster" on Amazon which has five "5-star" customer reviews. Compare this to the business reviews left for the learning center itself. The reviewers "Ellen LaFlesche-Christian", "Angie Lynn", "Kira Thompson", and more were all given free gifts with some monetary value (mostly free copies) and instructed to cross-post their review, almost verbatim, to the business address on google in order to hide negative reviews. These are not legitimate reviews for Groza Learning Center itself, and were clearly orchestrated as part of an intentional campaign. Otherwise why would nearly a half-dozen individuals all cross-post from Amazon to Google after receiving an incentive with monetary value?
Second, in response to mounting negative reviews on glassdoor (following the confrontation referenced in claim #2), someone posted numerous reviews saying how great of a place it was to work. Whereas the beginning posts referred to Groza Learning Center as a "hell hole", there were nearly a dozen posts within a short period all with 5 stars. These posts contain strange language referring to "facility costs" justifying their low salary (which tutors would not be privvy to and why would you list a low salary as a positive?), saying Scott has a "great business mind," and other targeted keywords.
Overcharging parents at the Groza Learning Center:
If you are a parent considering sending your child to Groza Learning Center, there are a few things you must know.
1. You will be paying $125-250 per hour.
2. The tutors of your children will only be making $15-20.
3. The tutors of your children will switch often, since employees quit on a monthly basis due to the working conditions (see below regarding toxic company culture).
4. You may be paired with a tutor who has minimal experience in what your child requires assistance with. Rather than finding the best tutor for your child, the Groza Learning Center will try to fill the time slot as quickly as possible. For example, if your child needs help with spanish, they may pair them with a mathematics tutor just so they can bill for the hours.
5. In summary, you will be getting ripped off. You might think you're paying $125-250 for a superb specialist, but in reality you're just paired with a tutor with little-to-no work experience or specialization to fill up billable hours.
Toxic company culture at the Groza Learning Center:
At Groza Learning center, the only goal is to make money for Scott and Christy Groza and not to keep employees happy or to do what's best for the children who need to learn. Rather than take my word for it, the following are direct quotes from the employee handbook since 2011. Decide for yourself if this is the right place to work or send your children:
"No lesson planning should be done 'day of' or right before your session with the student."
Technically this is how it should be, but this policy is swept under the rug. Scott Groza would rather you have more students, than spend time preparing to deliver the best lesson to the ones you have.
"How you leave is just as important to us as the work you do while you are with us. This is reflected in recommendations to future employers or lack thereof."
The Groza Learning Center threatens you before you even start working for them. Additionally, they have incredibly petty language to insinuate that you would be perpetually unemployed. I have NEVER heard of such an embarassing, unprofessional, and disgraceful attitude from an employer.
"Your social plans mean nothing us."
Imagine working for a company that says this to you. Now imagine that company is responsible for your child's academic future.
"...when you ask for a raise you are asking us to take a paycut."
The Groza Learning center charges parents between $125 to $250 per hour and only pays the tutors an average of $15-20 per hour. Overall, they probably make between $2-3 million per year. Again, if Groza cared about quality they would pay tutors more, but instead they insist on maintaining high margins and high turnover. Also, as a parent, why would you pay $125-250 to access tutors who are willing to work for $15-20? The only explanation is that the parents are getting ripped off by the greed of the Grozas.
"At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility for the company, the students, and our personal reputation (yes, the reputation of Scott and Christy Groza) is on our shoulders. We accept nothing less from ourserlves than to own a thriving business regardless of world economic affairs."
Like I said before, the #1 goal of Groza is to make money for the Grozas. The goal, "at the end of the day" is not to make a difference in children's lives, or to have the best learning outcomes possible, but to make money for Scott and Christy Groza. Imagine how important your children are to you. Do you want to send them to a place that prioritizes their own finances above and beyond the success of your family?
"...our decisions are always made by taking into account many details that you are not privvy to and ultimately for the best interest and survival of the company."
"We know that the... tone of this leter is unconventional, BUT, its design is to set you up for SUCESS (sic)."
A learning center capitalizes the word "success" and mispells it in their employment documents. Furthermore, these documents were created in 2011 and they saw no need to update or fix them. Even stranger, they mispelled "unprofessional" as "unconventional."
"If you are uncomfortable with the philosophy as stated above, do not hesitate to put in your resignation immediately. We are more than happy to part ways."
Again, can you believe that this type of language exists in an onboarding employment document? Think of the worst boss you've had in your life - would they say this to you on your first day on the job? Pushing this aside, it says a tremendous amount about the company culture. What's particularly worrisome is putting your child's future (and your hard-earned money) in the hands of people who think it's acceptable, as a human being, to treat and speak to others in such a manner.
Scott and Christy Groza. If you are reading this, please "do not hestitate" to try and refute the facts above. These quotes are directly written by you "Copyright 2011 Groza Learning Center. All Rights Reserved." To any parents reading this, there are plenty of smart and talented tutors and tutoring companies in the LA area that would have your childrens' best interest at heart.