As schools across America work to lift student achievement, the effect of technology in the classroom remains the subject of heated debate. Our experience in Henrico County, Va., sheds light on the power of technology to improve student learning.

If you want to see how technology expands the bounds of learning, you can look not only in our classrooms, but also at our track meets, school bus stops, and other places around Henrico County where students have their laptops open and their minds engaged. When we witness the effect of providing every student in grades 6-12 and every teacher with a laptop, what is striking is not just where our youngsters are studying but how much they are learning, as their steadily rising scores on rigorous assessments show.

We are now in the third year of this Teaching and Learning Initiative. Whether you take our measure anecdotally or analytically, it is evident that the power of educational technology is fulfilling its promise in Henrico County and creating a community of learners.

Deploying 25,000 wireless-capable laptops has engaged our students, enlivened the learning environment, and moved us toward the kind of equity of opportunity that ought to be at the heart of our democracy.

We believed--and now we can demonstrate--that providing universal access to laptops at the middle and high school level connects students to their school work in powerful new ways. This 24-7 access facilitates the kind of hands-on, creative environment where students learn best.

We wanted to move away from a sedentary learning style to a more constructivist approach. We wanted, that is, fewer lectures and more engaged, active learning using dynamic, current content. We knew from experience that students learn best as active learners.

Today, in many of our classrooms, there is a new sense of discovery and the feel of a research laboratory. Every student has access to a universe of online libraries. A class exploring Italian Renaissance artists, for example, reaches a depth and breadth of study well beyond what they would have been exposed to previously.

As a former biology teacher, I was delighted to observe a lab simulation of a frog dissection that represented a great leap forward over what had been possible before in lab instruction. What had been a once-a-year, two-hour experience was now a learning project that could be taken apart and reassembled in the classroom or at home. It is no surprise that student performance in 10th grade biology has increased dramatically.

Our students benefit from the impressive evolution of online content--from lab simulations to dynamic notation in mathematics to virtual museum tours. At the same time, we continue to see a role for more traditional materials. Technology cannot replace the pleasure of turning the pages of Julius Caesar--or Harry Potter.

Technology can build badly-needed connections between the school and the home. At the middle school level, we have required training for parents before students can get their laptops. Given that parental involvement in education traditionally falls off sharply in the middle and high school years, this training can serve a dual purpose: ensuring proper use of the computer and strengthening the link between family and school.