Whoa, Nellie! Kicking leadership up a notch: leadership matters. To see why students at risk require extraordinary school leaders, dine at a poorly managed restaurant when you're hungry.

I'm wondering if it's time to take ACSA's "Leadership Matters" campaign to another level. To illustrate:

This last July I took a trip to Yosemite. Eating at a fast food facility in the valley, I was astounded by the poor quality of the service. The cashiers had an expression making you think that the only way you could make their day worse was to place an order. The table under the mayonnaise, ketchup and mustard dispensers looked like someone had been finger-painting with a hideous orange color, the restrooms stank, and a sign on the outside tables made one feel as if a failure to bus the table before being finished would constitute cruelty to animals.

It was difficult to believe that we were in one of America's premiere locations. As I listened to the variety of languages spoken by those sitting around me, I became saddened thinking about the impression Americans must be making on visitors from around the world.

Hoping to be cheered, we left Yosemite Valley via a favorite drive--up to Tuolumne Meadows, over Tioga Pass, down to Mono Lake, and then back to the Central Valley via Sonora Pass. At the base of Tioga Pass, where Highway 120 meets U.S. 395, we stopped at a Mobile gas station after hearing rumors that the food served there was "out of this world." An investigation of the improbability of gourmet meals being served at a gas station was too intriguing to pass up.

The first thing I noticed was that the gas was $2.99--my first opportunity (and I'm sure not the last) to pay $3 a gallon had arrived. There were only two or three cars filling up; however, the parking lot was packed. Inside we ventured.

Walking into this mini-market, gift shop and deli made my pulse race. The place was immaculate. We were greeted with a friendly "hello and welcome." The restrooms were antiseptic. The line at the deli, though as large as at the fast-food grill in Yosemite, kept moving, and the workers went out of their way to help whoever was next. The menu was astounding. The smells, divine. No wonder this outpost in Lee Vining, Calif. (population 488) was packed!

Praying that a good portion of Yosemite's foreign tourists would somehow make it over Tioga Pass to check out the intriguing Mono Lake and happen to stop at an out-of-the-way gas station, I cut into a most delicious pork tenderloin, coated with fresh fruit compote on a bed of perfectly cooked and seasoned spaghetti squash. Now this was America!

And I realized that the difference between the Yosemite Grill and the Mobile gas station's Whoa Nellie's Deli (yes, that's what it's called) was a matter of leadership. Leadership matters: poor leadership can create, or at least maintain, a culture of dissonance; quality leadership can make the heart sing.

Williams Sanders and June Rivers (University of Tennessee), in their research on the residual effects of teacher quality, concluded, "Students benefiting from regular yearly assignment to more effective teachers (even if by chance) have an extreme advantage in terms of attaining higher levels of achievement. (The range of approximately 50 percentile points in student mathematics achievement as measured in this study is awesome!!! Differences of this magnitude could determine future assignments of remedial versus accelerated courses.)"

Residual effects on students

In addition, they concluded that there can be "near permanent retardation of academic achievement of many students resulting from experiencing the most hurtful teacher sequences [three poor teachers in a row]." I haven't seen a similar piece of research about the residual effects of strong or weak leadership of a school or a district, but nay guess is the results would be nearly as powerful.

As Whoa Nellie's Deli illustrates, we must kick it up a notch. Leadership matters; students-at-risk require extraordinary leaders.

George Manthey is a professional leadership executive for ACSA.