Today’s schools are faced with a challenge of rising operating costs, shrinking budgets and increased pressure to raise student achievement. This research focuses on school districts’ wireless technology capabilities and what it has to offer in order to cut costs while simultaneously raising student achievement. The focus of the research was on rural school districts with total district enrollment between 1,500 and 3,000 students.

A survey of rural school districts was performed to determine and assess the best practices for using wireless technology in schools. The study revealed that wireless technology improves school districts in several ways: (1) Increased efficiency by improving data communications that lead to faster transfer of information within the schools and between parents, community members and administration. (2) Wireless technology enables the user to communicate anywhere in the school, without needing extra cables or adaptors to access office networks. (3) The flexibility that wireless technology offers will give the students, staff and administration more freedom to implement technology into the curriculum, which cannot be duplicated by any other form of technology. (4) Student achievement increases in classes that use wireless technology to enhance curriculum. (5) Wireless technology allows schools to offer new curriculum, services and a variety of learning opportunities for its staff and students.

The ability of wireless technology to improve student learning, cut educational expenses and improve a school’s overall efficiency cannot be ignored. This paper provides evidence that can be used to justify the implementation of wireless technologies, explore cost savings that wireless technology offers, and demonstrate that wireless technologies can contribute to the raising of student achievement.