it's far worse than that. schools intentionally slow kids down, can't have any particular kid excelling. 4 hour a day home school kids can easily cover 2x the material in half the time. there are tons of home school kids doing high school algebra by 4th grade nowadays.

shit, i went to public school, and if i finished in-class work early, the teacher's response was to do more busy work. a lot more. teachers intentionally stopped disclosing the homework until the very end of class so that kids who finished the in-class busy work would be intentionally stunted, and forced to waste time. i would do the entire homework that's supposed to take 60+ minutes in less than 5. it wasn't until 10th grade that i got to opt out of that shit with college classes.

it is incomprehensible to these people that others around them can be so much farther ahead.