I never claimed to be citing a study. I said I was speaking from experience.

We have six kids (3 boys, 3 girls) and have moved several times. We moved them (as school-aged kids) from a near Boston suburb to a Boston exurb. We then moved them to a Chicago mid burb prior to HS. Those moves weren't a big deal. We then moved with HS-aged kids from Chicagoland to a NYC suburb. Finally, with one kid left, we moved into Manhattan.

We moved one boy the summer between FR and SO year (Chicago to NYC) and at the same time moved his brothers who were 1 and 2 grades behind. We moved a daughter mid-year FR year (NYC burb into city). The school district moved that child to a different HS the summer between her FR and SO years.

Here's what I can tell you as the Dad of these kids.

For boys involved in sports, moves in middle school are OK, but moves after freshman season are rough. Freshman season is when kids are brought together from their various middle schools and new groups of friends are formed. It's also when coaches begin to formulate their plans of how they intend to use those kids in coming years, which is a huge deal for boys and their mental health. Dropping in suddenly at the start of sophomore year, even if you are good, is disruptive to a team's social structure. In fact, if you're good at your sport, you will take away someone's spot. As a result, he and his friends will be out to get you on the field of play and around school. That will eventually go away, but it may take a year or two.

For girls, lunchroom drama tends to be a really big deal. Finding a group to sit with is extremely stressful for girls. And for our daughter who we moved, the thespian and choir drama played out very similar to our son's soccer team drama. When a new girl unexpectedly gets a lead in the musical and a solo in the concert, there will be hell to pay on the bus, in the lunchroom and in the hallways. And I will add that while boy locker room drama fades after a season or two, it never ends on the girl side. The cliques remain the same--all 4 years of HS! We didn't move our other 2 daughters during HS and all I can say is "thank goodness" cuz they really needed their stable groups of friends.

On the academic side, I will add that most districts aim to have an integrated curriculum so that HS math and science build on what was taught in middle school. If you change districts, your kid will be missing bits of knowledge that were in the elementary and middle school curriculae. And if you move states like we did, your kids' HS history teachers will be wondering why your kids know absolutely nothing about state history. Ditto for earth science. What's wrong with this family; why has this kid not seen this state's most renowned geographic features?

My 2nd-to-last point is college applications. Colleges want full HS transcripts. If you move districts, it is such a pain in the backside to get them from the old district for 10 different college applications! I can also tell you from experience that it is also a giant pain if one school district uses a 0-100 scale for grading while another uses A-F letter grades. Colleges don't like to have do the conversions; it's easier to just hit the reject button. Colleges also like to see a kid's class rank, but typically a kid won't get a rank if she moved during HS.

Finally, as a dad of 4 millenials and 2 GenZs, and as a church youth leader who worked with both generations, I will simply say that GenZ does not cope as well as previous generations with social stress. I don't know why that is, but it is what it is. So when looking at historical situations that turned out OK in the end (like ours), keep that in mind.