We use the Robovation kits for teaching C and autonomous robot programming. The programming environment is identical to the the FRC controller (with a few minor exceptions). We've used it to prototype algorithms and then just move the code to the FRC robot. For example we have a "baby" four wheel omni-drive system with made from a Robovation kit running the same code as our full-sized robot. We did the small version as a proof of concept and it worked great.
Now for a shameless plug for some other stuff that we're doing...
To make programming easier I developed a framework that lets you quickly write complex autonomous programs with inexpensive "hobby-robotics" sensors. All "user" code is (usually) in a single file and "device drivers" can be installed that request services from the framework like timers and interrupts. I also removed the concept of the fast-code/slow code, and explicit getdata and putdata.
We used it with several Robovation tournaments and classes run at WPI with hundreds with students and it works great. I'm giving a presentation about the framework at the conference in Atlanta on Saturday and probably putting up the code on line somewhere right after that. (need to make sure it's cleaned up for release).
I'm hoping to port the code to the FRC and VEX controllers before next season.
Incidentally, we're running a two week summer high school robotics resident program at WPI. Students learn C programming and mechanical design on the VEX and FRC robots that ends in a VEX tournament between student teams with robots that they build. If you might be interested, here's the link (look at the bottom of the page):
http://www.admissions.wpi.edu/Frontiers/study.html
Brad