By Joyce Szuflita
"On top of all the stress of placement, isn't it hard for the kids to leave their old friends to go to a new middle school?" I get this a lot from the parents of young children, especially when those parents have loved their own experience growing up having the same friends k-8th grade. Often the kids’ first requirement is that they attend school where their friends are attending. This is of course impossible to engineer. What I often find is that there are unrecognized benefits to a shake up.