The amount of the scholarship would be fixed or possibly determined by income, so that a family could spend it on whichever option provided the “most bang for the buck” given its own situation.

I would suggest using the Internet and targeting the three primary constituencies (teachers, parents, and students) with social networking sites that solve key problems for each group in an ‘open-source’ manner.

For example, I expect teachers would like a source of lesson plans with ratings and commentary, so perhaps a networking site where teachers could submit structured lesson plans for comment, revision, etc. would work. A few hundred million dollars to reward early users for the best submissions, etc., should go a long way to populating the site and making it useful. Other teacher needs should be determined by asking them.

Parents want a help with homework, a reasonably objective measure of their kids progress and knowledge level, advice on dealing with the education bureaucracy, etc. I think their issues will tend to be somewhat more dependent on geographical location, child’s grade level, etc, which will tend to fragment the audience, so this group is likely to require the most work and ingenuity, but on the flip side, there are millions of parents who don’t work full-time, and I expect at least several thousand could be found who would put some creative energy into this (a few hundred million should provide some incentive). Again, it will be imperative to create an organic, experimental culture that builds from the grassroots up, using the open source model, rather than a top-down approach.

Finally, once you have a year or two of experience with the teachers and parents, you create a student-oriented networking site that builds on the success and tools in the teacher and parent networks. This one is least likely to be self-sustaining, so you will need to devote probably a billion dollars to getting it started (through awards, contests, etc.) and use the remaining $3+ billion as principal for investment and use the returns for ongoing funding. An example of a viral, student driven network could be a ‘HSNN’, High School News Network that would use Youtube videos, blogs, etc. to publish activities such as robot wars, athletics, artistic performances (music videos, etc.), science fairs, etc. The key would be to provide infrastructure for students to easily submit content, while providing easy ways for other students to find what they want (RSS feeds, ‘channels’, etc.). Catching younger kids will be tougher, but will probably be accessible through parents and teachers. Online games similar to those in the ‘brain training’ games could both improve basic skills and provide benchmarks.

Together these efforts will raise quality of education in the classroom (both by raising teacher capability and parent/teacher standards), raise quality of parental support (both at the home and with pressure on administration), and enable objective evaluation of basics in younger kids, plus provide broader experiences to older students.

No solution will serve every student or every type of student. My choice is to spur the effort of top students.

Students are the one group in the whole education mix who have to defer gratification for all the effort they put into learning for a loooong time. Everybody else gets their reward now. And don’t tell me grades are a reward. Teachers and administrators get paid, no matter how poorly they perform. Parents are absolved of the responsibility for imparting basic knowledge to their children as parents have always done, until the last 150 years. So let’s put some real, significant, tangible incentive out there for the ones who have to actually do the work of learning.

I would invest the $5 billion to yield conservatively 5%, after reinvestment to preserve principal, or $250 million annually. There are about 20,000 high schools in the US. Give $250 to nine of the third through twelfth highest GPAs and to the tenth randomly selected student in that group $10,000.

This removes one of the biggest factors that prevent disadvantaged students from succeeding – their own families and communities. No matter how hard you try in school or even in their homes, the negative influences that many students are faced with the other 14-16 hours of the day ruin them.

5 billion would go fast, but hopefully the school’s success would attract other funding sources.

-Set up a parallel organization that’s tasked with developing/proselytizing/supporting solutions for common school-related tasks such as Moodle for course management, etc. along the lines of Canonical and its relationship with Ubuntu. Support open source textbooks/learning materials/web sites/programs.

…turn high schools into small scale colleges with an amazing array of academic subjects (more language, science, math courses, with better teachers who are able to adapt teaching styles to the students instead of demanding the other way around). Drill a sense of mission into the teachers thereof: YOU HAVE FOUR YEARS LEFT. YOU ARE TO ASSUME THAT THIS IS THE LAST EDUCATION THEY WILL EVER RECEIVE!!! Teach and behave accordingly. (For those dead-set against going to college, vocational classes for the specialty of their choice, or perhaps teaming up with local community colleges to give them specialized training wherever they elect to go.

And de-emphasize extracurricular activities and athletics. They simply suck up way too much oxygen.

Forgive the rambling nature of this post; I hope the point gets across…