(By Patrick Tolan, director of Youth-Nex at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia) There is a troubling bias that most adults hold about adolescents, particularly in how we overlook the importance of the transition from elementary to middle school. It is a bias that goes beyond insensitivity and creates serious consequences – impeding education, stymying potential, and decreasing productivity and civic engagement with the world around them. It also misdirects policy and allocation of limited resources.