Several studies suggest that values-affirmation can serve as a simple, yet powerful, tool for dramatically reducing achievement gaps. Because subtle variations in implementation procedures may explain some of the variation in these findings, it is crucial for researchers to measure the fidelity with which interventions are implemented. The authors discuss the two purposes that drove this work: (1) They employed a critical components approach to identify the most crucial elements of a classroom-administered values-affirmation intervention; and (2) Their district-wide randomized trial of values-affirmation revealed important, but relatively modest, impacts compared to previous studies. The intervention took place in an urban school district in the Midwest, and was implemented over two cohorts of 7th grade students across 11 schools, with qualitative data from 44 teachers involved in the exercise implementation. The results show, overall, the implementations across the school year appeared close to the ideal. However, in this scaled up intervention was found substantial variation in fidelity across schools and classrooms, particularly in terms of the teacher-centered delivery of the intervention. While measurements are limited by the realities of scaling up a research project into the everyday classrooms of teachers, the authors believe their data supported integrating teachers more fully into the process of delivery in order to resolve the conflict between teacher blindness on one hand and stealth and normalcy for students on the other--as this internal contradiction was implicated in the variation in teacher delivery.