(FORTUNE Magazine) – As one crucial part of the Bush Administration's new education strategy, a group of business leaders will raise from $150 million to $200 million for research into how public schools should operate in the year 2000 and beyond. The group -- headed by Alcoa Chief Executive Paul O'Neill and including such other high-octane CEOs as John Akers of IBM and Norman Augustine of Martin Marietta -- will funnel the money through a new nonprofit corporation. It will offer its findings to 535 schools -- at least one per congressional district -- that are being picked as places to put the research to work. Former Xerox CEO David Kearns will serve as government liaison for the effort once he is confirmed as a Deputy Secretary of Education. The group's agenda is open-ended, the goal lofty. Says O'Neill: ''We are starting with a blank piece of paper. The idea is to rethink the way we educate our citizens, to take a worldly view of what it means to learn.'' Bush's plan is aimed at reinvigorating the teachers, administrators, and others who run America's schools. But the hoopla surrounding its announcement had barely died down before some educators closed ranks and began picking at aspects of the program that threaten the status quo. Turf battles are sure to follow. Albert Shanker, head of the potent American Federation of Teachers, even complained that private rather than federal money would be used for the research projects. Says he: ''School reform shouldn't be an act of charity.''