If you are ever in Stockholm, you must visit the Vasa Museum. It contains a complete warship launched in 1628 that sank 30 minutes later. After the Vasa sank, the king, who commissioned it, Gustav II Adolphe, called together a commission to find out whose fault it was, to punish the guilty. Yet the commission, after many interviews with survivors, found that no one did anything wrong. 3 ½ centuries later, modern researchers came to the same conclusion. So what went wrong?
In education reform, there is a constant debate about how much is contributed to effectiveness by a program as opposed to quality of implementation. Most researchers, developers, and educators agree that success only results from a combination of good programs and good implementation.