Center for Public Research and Leadership | Columbia Law School

Our Innovative Model

Over the past decade, a number of K-12 organizations have shed outmoded bureaucracies and transformed into organizations that can learn and adapt. These changes are crucial if schools are to meet the challenge of preparing diverse student populations for fulfilling lives in a demanding global economy.  In turn, these changes magnify the need for motivated public leaders and managers who can accelerate the process.

In 2009, after serving as chief accountability officer for the New York City Department of Education, Professor James Liebman returned to the Law School and began designing CPRL’s path-breaking model, which he successfully piloted in the spring of 2011. CPRL recruits talented students from graduate and professional schools who are looking for the skills needed to engineer meaningful institutional change in the public sector. CPRL provides students with hands-on, guided opportunities to acquire these skills, while simultaneously helping K-12 organizations meet their short-term project and long-term capacity needs.

CPRL’s sequence of courses introduces law, business, and education students to proven frameworks for solving public problems, encourages close examination of key policy debates in K-12 education, and fosters the professional skills needed by leaders and managers. At the same time, high-quality consulting work undertaken by the center at well-below-market rates helps finance new experiential learning opportunities for students and support new lines of action-oriented research.

For more information, download an overview of CPRL's model (PDF).