Case Method Institute for Education and Democracy

The Case Method Institute for Education and Democracy is an independent nonprofit organization based in Cambridge, MA, dedicated to improving high school history and civics education throughout the United States. The Institute grew out of a pilot program launched at Harvard Business School in 2015 by Professor David Moss. The pilot worked with high school teachers nationwide to bring the signature teaching approach at Harvard Business School—the case method—to U.S. history, government, and civics classrooms, enabling high school students to train for active citizenship in the same way professional school students train for leadership in business and law. As part of the program, high school teachers received access (at no charge) to twenty-two cases originally developed for Professor Moss’s Harvard College course, “History of American Democracy,” along with teaching materials and ongoing support to help them introduce case method teaching into their classrooms. 

Over its five-year duration, the pilot was enormously popular with educators and demonstrated remarkable impacts on the over 50,000 students reached—including improved critical thinking, deeper understanding of course material, and greater academic and civic engagement. In the course’s inaugural year at Harvard, an undergraduate deemed it “the civics course everyone should take”; in the years since, teachers and students have frequently spoken of the program’s benefits in the superlative, often as “a game-changer” and “a laboratory for citizenship.” In 2020, project shifted its operations to the Case Method Institute, an independent non-profit, to facilitate more rapid expansion.  

The Institute is now scaling up its operations and impact, having to-date reached over 80,000 students in all 50 states. The Institute delivers premier in-person and online professional development for high school teachers, provides unparalleled teaching support and coaching, and creates genuine and sustained partnerships with individual teachers who are successfully bringing the case method and the history of American democracy cases to their students across diverse school settings. In the coming years, we aim to partner with at least 10,000 teachers, creating a network of social studies educators with the capacity to reach millions of young people. Ultimately, the Institute aims to strengthen American education and democracy, making a profound and lasting impact on the next generation.