From the July/August 2005 issue of The Atlantic.

Kids who do well in school don’t get as much time off when they misbehave. (Shucks.)

No Smart Bully Left Behind

[Referring to the U.S. 2001 No Child Left Behind Act which tied federal school funding to performance on annual tests.]

Because “suspended students [make up] a very large share of the students who do not take the test,” the study concludes that testing may give schools an incentive to keep their best students in school even when they misbehave, and to keep low-performing students out.

Who’s been refilling my bowl surreptitiously?

If You Serve It, They Will Eat

Researchers gave fifty-four test subjects bowls of tomato soup–half of which were “self-refilling” bowls equipped with a hidden tube that slowly pumped soup in through the bottom as the subject ate. Those whose bowls had been refilled ate 73 percent more than the others, but reported themselves no more sated. And when asked to estimate how many calories they’d consumed, the subjects with normal bowls were more or less on target, underestimating their intake by only 32.3 calories–whereas those whose soup had been replenished slurped up 140.5 more calories than they thought.