If you were looking for an icon to be a starting place for your educational program, you'd have to decide first what part of folk you wanted to teach. If you're going to accomplish anything, you have to do that anyway. I don't know that they've picked Ellington because he's the best way to get at jazz a whole (whatever that is), but maybe he's one of the best ways to get at "jazz that high school bands can play".

Anybody you pick is going to narrow your focus somehow, even someone as eclectic as Pete Seeger has been over the years. The essence of Seeger's approach to music is "means to an end." The collector approach is more of "music for music's sake" (depending on the collector), but your choice of collector narrows it, too. If you picked Lomax, you'd be ignoring everything north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

I have to say that any educational program putting itself forward as the "most unique" has lost way too many points with me in just the first few paragraphs, anyway. :-) And the competitive aspect of it deals the final death blow.
~ Becky in Tucson