An astonishing regularity in student learning rate
From the abstract:<p><i>These findings pose a challenge for theories of learning to explain the odd combination of large variation in student initial performance and striking regularity in student learning rate.</i><p>My anecdotal experience from teaching math in higher ed for 20 years is that the variation in initial performance might be due to passing students who don’t deserve to pass.  Especially in recent years our (teachers’) performance is measure by passing rate and I have very little incentive to fail a student even if they don’t know the material.<p>I have no expertise on this topic but it seems to me that some people are truly smarter than others.  As an extreme example consider the difference in intellectual talent between Einstein and a mentally disabled person.  I suggest the possibility that maybe some people start off school in kindergarten behind their peers and never catch up.  If the rate of learning is largely the same for people then starting off in kindergarten in the upper half in terms of knowledge would likely lead to one ending up in the upper half of knowledge at the end of college.