In the UK it gets mad as well. Whiteboards that are conected to the internet - every kid with their own PC!!!

I want to a small private school and our results were way above average. We had almost no PCs, and lessons were pretty didactic (as we assumed that the teacher knew more than the pupils - heresy I know).

My entire chemistry class either did medicine or went to Cambridge. There was no lesson planning at all. No computers were ever used. We had a blackboard, eager pupils and a decent teacher. The basics were there and the school being private didn't waste money on junk that wouldn't increase success.
Yes, the issue is less money not being spent on good teachers, more good teachers being wasted on retards. I sat in one of the lower-GCSE science groups today, the teacher was brilliant, enthusiastic, but his class was half full of idiots and half full of people with no interest in school. A complete waste of time, someone who can't handle GCSE science (which is really super basic, especially the stuff these people were doing) shouldn't be in school. Money spent on a nice whiteboard won't help them, they should be doing something useful like an apprenticeship.

The interactive whiteboards can be pretty useful though. It's not a central bit of a lesson though, it's just an extra help.