I am absolutely infatuated with quad copters, I own a Hubsan x4 and hopefully can upgrade to something along the lines of a DJI Phantom in the future. This would be a brilliant idea to implement in the classroom. Also, when pitching the curriculum to the school, I would recommend trying to avoid the word "drone" as it tends to have a negative connotation among those who are ill-informed of their multi-purpose and solely focus on their militaristic uses.
My strongest recommendation would be to buy one or two of the WL v911 single rotor helicopters because similar to most intermediate quad copters, it's 4 channels. (Throttle, Pitch, Roll, and Yaw) Also, the v911 is fairly durable in my experience, which means you can afford to have several mistakes. Hence, if you can master flying the v911, most if not all 4 channel quads should be an absolute breeze to handle. Moral of the story; start cheap and work your way up, my friend's uncle bought a 300 dollar quad (AR Drone) and flew it right into a lake
