National reach
Over 3,000 partner teachers across all 50 states.
CMI partner teachers work in every kind of school — Title I and non-Title I, urban, rural, and suburban, from every part of the country. The case method is taught in on-level courses, honors courses, and AP and IB courses, to students reading at, below, and above grade level.
Check the map below to see if teachers are already using the case method in your area — or if you have a chance to be the first.
3,000+
Partner teachers
2,500+
High schools
350,000+
Students reached
50 states
Plus D.C. & territories
Academic and Civic Benefits
Documented impact across key measures.
From the pilot phase through the present, CMI has conducted rigorous research on the impact of discussion-based case method teaching in high school classrooms. The results have been remarkably consistent — across years, across school types, and across student populations.
Engagement
Students develop the confidence to speak up and the ability to back up what they say. Case discussions generate the energy of a real debate — an energy that teachers consistently describe as distinctive and transformative.
Critical Thinking
Students practice drawing inferences, building arguments from evidence, defending positions under questioning, and refining their reasoning — skills that transfer across all their academic work.
Civic Commitment
Comparison-group studies show that students in case method classrooms are more likely to consider democracy 'absolutely important' and express greater interest in civic participation.
Academic Performance
Teachers report improvements in student writing quality, participation, and performance on course and standardized exams — particularly on essay and free-response questions.
For every student
A versatile approach that puts students on a level playing field.
The case method has a long history in professional schools — and it has proven to be highly versatile. It has worked strikingly well at every type of high school and for students of all ability levels. The cases, which were originally written for college students, are challenging, and the Socratic questioning is always demanding. But students in one classroom after another, irrespective of reading levels, have risen to the challenge.
The method's emphasis on a single text — a single shared body of facts — means that students with different levels of background knowledge, different perspectives, and different experiences are all held to the same standards of evidence. The lack of definitively “correct” or “right” answers to the some of the largest questions posed in case discussions reflects the complexity of real life, challenging students to think beyond the narrow incentives of what they need to know to pass a test, and engaging them in an authentic intellectual process that rewards dialogue, nuance, and persuasion.
To support students at all reading levels, CMI provides audio versions of every case — so students can listen as they read — as well as annotated editions with section summaries written at a 10th-grade reading level. These tools help ensure that the intellectual challenge of the case method is accessible to every student.
“I had students on middle school reading levels who did the case with me over a two-week period. They were engaged; I did not have to ask students to put phones away at any point. They learned more through this experience than the rest of my teaching combined. One of my students said it was the first ‘A’ they had ever earned.”
— CMI partner teacher
The days of limiting the case method and all of its benefits to professional school students are, and ought to be, behind us. The same approach long used to train MBAs for leadership in business can be just as effective for preparing young people for higher education, for their careers, and for the responsibilities of democratic citizenship.
Join the community of partner teachers.
Professional development, all 23 cases, teaching materials, and one-on-one support — at no cost.
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