Urban districts cannot achieve the dramatic reforms needed to increase student achievement without first making significant reforms in their strategic management of human capital, according to leaders of a national project that was launched by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education 
early this year.
Human capital is a new term for human resources, reinforcing the notion that employees are the most valuable asset of successful organizations. Strategic Management of Human Capital (SMHC) in Public Education is the name of the new project, which is funded by the Carnegie Corporation and the Gates Foundation.
The five-year project is designed to research and influence human resource management reforms in urban districts. Achieving better results with students depends on having talented teachers and leaders, which, in turn, requires better strategies to attract, develop, and retain talent. SMHC reform strategies will focus on eight functional HR areas: recruitment, selection, induction, mentoring, professional development, compensation, performance management, and instructional leadership.
A key premise behind the project is that today, only a few individual aspects of SMHC are on the educational reform agenda—better recruitment here, performance pay there, emphasis on professional development elsewhere. These individual initiatives need to be integrated into a broader system to achieve strategic management of human capital with the ultimate goal of improving education.
The project is being guided by an influential national task force of education leaders. It will draw on case studies of successful practices from Boston, Chicago, Fairfax County, New York City, Long Beach, the state of Minnesota, and from organizations such as Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools, and the New Teacher Project. More information on the SMHC project is available on the consortium’s Web site .
