When Wendy Kopp graduated from Princeton in the late 1980s, she considered the typical career options for someone of her achievements. Wall Street? Management consulting? But she couldn't stop thinking about the idea behind her university thesis. How to attract talented, high-performing graduates into a career few would have otherwise thought of - teaching. She was particularly interested in having the best and brightest teach in the lowest performing schools.
The result is Teach for America, a not-for-profit organisation that is now nearly 30 years old, has 37,000 alumni, an exceptional track record and is the model behind dozens of similar schemes around the world, including Australia. 
In itself, this model can't transform all problems in education standards. But it can boost results for students in some of the worst performing schools in different countries. It also offers a relatively quick way into teaching for some of the best university graduates who wouldn't have otherwise contemplated it.
In the United States, the majority of successful applicants turn down high-paying alternative jobs from employers such as Google or McKinsey to instead commit to two years of teaching in poor rural or inner-city communities. Many never go back to their original career options, with about two-thirds still in roles related to education and half of them still teachers. According to Kopp, the experience inspires teachers as well as their students so that most want to continue well beyond the initial two years.
The results in (largely black) areas such as Washington DC and New Orleans is marked - as well as in some remote rural backwaters of the US. There are significant increases in high school graduation rates, and a large proportion of the school principals, as well as teachers, are alumni of Teach for America.
The local equivalent, Teach for Australia, is still modest in size so it's too early to show such impressive stats. The program began in Victoria six years ago and has spread to the ACT, the Northern Territory and Western Australia this year.
But Melodie Potts Rosevear, founder and chief executive of the Australian program, is confident about the ability to show similar results here over time. She says they are already seeing the impact across subjects and schools, including record-breaking year 12 results, significant increases in university attendance upon graduation and the first two Teach for Australia alumni as acting principals.
According to Kopp, who recently visited Australia, the key to success is choosing applicants with the qualities of leadership and resilience necessary to cope with teaching in some of the toughest and most disadvantaged schools. What it doesn't mean is having them sign up for several years of traditional teacher training. Instead, the program relies on intensive training after graduation in another discipline. In the US, this includes special camps for a few months ahead of being placed into a school - as well as constant feedback and support.
Not that it is easy to get into the program. Last year, for example, the Teach for America program accepted 10 per cent of applicants - 4400 from 44,000. If anything, it's even harder to get into Teach for Australia. There was a 30 per cent increase in local applications last year to 1300. Only 67 were accepted.
About 40 per cent of those chosen also have the academic background to teach in areas of critical shortage such as maths and science.
The lack of teaching expertise in these crucial subjects is part of a broader educational problem in Australia, evident in declining standards and falling numbers of students. But the lack of appropriate teacher qualifications in maths and science is even more obvious in rural and remote schools where Teach for Australia claims to be the only program specifically addressing the shortage.
There are currently 110 teachers - called associates - in the Australian program, working in 52 schools.
The Australian Council for Education Research maintains universities set their standards too low for accepting undergraduates in teaching. The TFA associates had an average university entrance mark of 95. That compares to only 5 per cent of those entering traditional teacher training having entrance marks of more than 90.
Just under half of the Teach for Australia graduates are male. Without the option offered by the program, 80 per cent say they would not have considered going into teaching straight away.
As well as training after university graduation, they work only four days out of five in class while completing a two-year master's of education degree from Deakin University. They are only officially qualified as teachers after completing this. According to Rosevear, all their partner principals say they would recommend and hire TFA Associates again.
She is a former US management consultant with a master's from Harvard. Education, she says, was the ticket out of her own rural background. In her view, postcodes should not determine academic results.
"I'm living proof that education - specifically great teachers - can have life-changing effects on a child's destiny. And the research on teacher quality backs this up."
Now she is hoping to build greater philanthropic support for Teach for Australia. Unlike the US, Teach for Australia mainly relies on government funding, including a $22 million federal government grant last year.
"We are privileged to be supported by the Australian government, but states, corporations and philanthropies also have an important role to play in sponsoring our work in breaking the cycle of disadvantage," Rosevear says.
Given the billions of dollars spent on trying to address educational disadvantage, it looks a remarkably cheap down-payment on potential.