The William T. Grant Foundation in New York City and the Chicago-based Spencer Foundation have announced two grants totaling nearly $1 million to help improve the measurement of quality in the classroom.

A team of researchers at the University of Virginia will receive $495,000 to develop inexpensive easy-to-administer tools that assess teacher-student interactions using student and informant survey information. And a team at Stanford University will receive $500,000 to improve a classroom observation protocol designed to assess the effectiveness of the Classroom Quality for English Language Learners (CQELL) protocol.

The two-year grants are part of a continuing effort to support the progress of researchers working on valid, reliable, and cost-effective measures that can be used in large-scale, multi-site research studies. To date, the foundations have awarded $3.3 million to eight research teams through the initiative.

"There are few good, cost-effective measures of what distinguishes classrooms that improve student outcomes from those that do not," said Robert C. Granger, president of the William T. Grant Foundation. "Our foundations are working together to solve that problem."