Choosing the best school for your child could be a difficult task. Whether your child will be in kindergarten and you are confronting this decision for the first time, or whether you live in a place that offers a choice of schools from which you can pick, or whether you are moving to another part of the country, the decision is a difficult one and should depend on information about the school itself.

School quality depends on many factors, not all easily measurable, and not all equally important for each individual child or family. Based on knowledge of their own child, parents may want to consider what is most important to their particular situation: Small class size?

The availability of extracurricular activities? A particular teaching approach, like mixed-age grouping or Montessori?

Parents may want to keep in mind that no written set of assessments or test scores can take the place of visiting a school and forming one’s own opinion about the overall environment and quality of the school.

Here are some things to think about in choosing a new school:

• Visit the school to see if you get the feeling that it is child- and family-oriented.

• Check what services are available at the school.

• Look for books for children and adults.