This report argues that instructional improvement, which goes hand-in-hand with efforts at education reform, can be promoted through the strategic use of human resource management (HRM) practices at the school, district, and state levels. The authors present information from the organizational and management literatures on how firms in several fields have made use of various HRM practices to achieve organizational goals. Considering instructional improvement as a primary goal of schools, districts, and states, the authors then consider how strategic HRM practices might be used to achieve this goal. Using vignettes from three elementary schools in the Chicago Annenberg Research Project, the authors examine how the schools' strategic use of HRM practices affected their ability to change teaching practices. The authors conclude by reviewing how strategic HRM practices might be implemented in educational settings. [Funding for this report was provided by the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.]