Policy attention in education is sharpening around whether governments are funding evidence-aligned instruction and staffing models. In New York, lawmakers’ “Back to Basics” literacy overhaul paid $10 million to retrain 20,000 teachers on “science of reading” principles, but critics reviewing the union-developed course said it still leans on outdated “balanced literacy” and “three-cueing,” which some researchers equate to guessing. Separately in England, the National Education Union warned that SEND inclusion reforms cannot be implemented at the scale promised because schools lack staff. The union’s general secretary said teachers viewed inclusion as “can’t be done ‘on the cheap’,” arguing the government’s added funding and inclusion funds would not cover workforce and workload pressures. Both stories share an implementation risk: well-branded reforms can fail if course materials or staffing capacity do not match what policymakers say they are funding. For higher education, the implications run through teacher education partnerships, curriculum alignment, and the evidence standards used by accreditation and state approval bodies when training future instructors and special education staff.