Steve Jobs' widow is trying to create a new model for America's high schools

Laurene Powell Jobs has started a $50 million project to rethink America's high schools, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Powell Jobs is calling the initiative XQ: The Super School Project, and it's described as a movement to create a new schooling model in America.

"The [current school] system was created for the work force we needed 100 years ago," Powell Jobs told the Times.

"Things are not working the way we want it to be working. We've seen a lot of incremental changes over the last several years, but we're saying, 'Start from scratch.' "

To that end, the XQ project will accept proposals over the next few months from teams of educators, students, or any other innovative people who wish to submit ideas.

The project will then choose winning proposals and partner with the teams who created the ideas to implement them in partner schools.

The XQ project isn't Powell Job's first foray into education reform. She cofounded an organization called College Track in 1997, which enables students from underserved communities to graduate from college. She also serves on the board of Udacity, a nonprofit organization that offers massive open online courses (MOOCs) and aims to make education more affordable.