Bloom's original theory assumes that with practice, the slower learners will become faster learners and the gap of individual differences will disappear. Bloom believes these differences in learning pace occur because of lack of prerequisite knowledge and if all children have the same prerequisite knowledge, then learning will progress at the same rate. Bloom places the blame on teaching settings where students aren't given enough time to reach mastery levels in prerequisite knowledge before moving on to the new lesson. He also uses this to explain why variance in student learning is smaller in the first grade when compared to students in the 7th grade (the smart get smarter, and the slower fall further behind). He referred to this learning rate variance as the Vanishing Point.