Rick Mintrop, currently on the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, was an educator at the school level in various capacities in both the United States and Germany before he entered into an academic career. He received an MA in political science and German literature at the Freie Universität Berlin and a PhD in education from Stanford University.

He was the faculty co-director of the Principal Leadership Institute at UCLA and has been the director of the doctoral program in Leadership for Educational Equity (LEEP) at Berkeley since 2006. LEEP aims to prepare strong leaders for high-need urban schools, and design development studies are the signature pedagogy of this program.

As a researcher, he explores school change and improvement at the nexus of educational policies, teachers' work, and broader institutional changes. He examined these relationships, first, in East German schools that underwent fundamental changes after the collapse of authoritarian socialism. A number of articles and a book, Educational Change and Social Transformation (with Hans Weiler and Elisabeth Fuhrmann, 1996), resulted from this work. He coauthored (with Bruno Losito, CEDE, Italy) The Teaching of Civic Education (2001), which looks at the conditions of civic education teaching in twenty-eight countries. His interest in design-based thinking began in a project that was inspired by the work of the late Ann Brown and produced, among other publications, an article, "Educating Student and Novice Teachers in a Constructivist Manner: Can It All Be Done?" (Teachers College Record, 2002), which was the Top Featured Article in the 2002 volume.

He has written various publications about his research on school accountability; these include Schools on Probation: How Accountability Works (and Doesn't Work) (2004); "The Practical Relevance of Accountability Systems for School Improvement" (with Tina Trujillo, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis); "Predictable Failure of Federal Sanctions-Driven Accountability for School Improvement--And Why We May Retain It Anyway" (with Gail Sunderman, Educational Researcher, 2009); and "Bridging Accountability Obligations, Professional Values, and (Perceived) Student Needs with Integrity," (Journal of Educational Administration, 2012), which was named Commendable Paper for the 2012 volume.