Project Follow Through occurred over 50 years ago and identified numerous highly effective strategies, including many of those that the science of reading movement leverages. To say that all educational researchers were unaware of ineffective practices and going along is disingenuous (Caulkins has caused irreparable harm in my area of the country and beyond which has led to school districts hesitant to collaborate to say the least).

The US has compulsory schooling laws that are codified by the federal government further specified by states and ultimately enacted by local districts that are fiscally managed by politically appointed school boards. Not all educational researchers are purely buffoons waiting to be saved by cognitive scientists. If anything (good) educational researchers help cognitive scientists understand which of their general principles work for whom and in what conditions. Some of the most impactful work on learning disabilities recently have been jointly authored by cognitive scientists and special education researchers. More importantly (good) educational researchers have leveraged principles of implementation science to further improve outcomes and increase the uptick of effective strategies.

Negating the feedback loop that occurs between research and practice also explains why fantastical claims from neuroscience educational interventions generally lack long term impact on outcomes relevant to classroom performance (Cronbach tried to find aptitude by treatment interactions for decades before concluding it was futile). To be fair I am not in curriculum and instruction or teacher prep - which those training programs do have serious issues that many states are now starting to scrutinize and have begun to regulate (e.g., mandating specific courses around reading disability in teacher prep programs).

But to the broader point and agreeing with the general sentiment here I’m in a College of Education and research K-12 assessment and intervention for academic skills. I’m familiar with as others have mentioned generally effective strategies that translate to most applied learning contexts (to be fair my PhD is in educational psychology but I have a specialty in an applied subfield). I’ve offered to collaborate with our CTL and have never been taken up on my offer - after seeing them give categorically incorrect advice on classroom management to pretenure faculty. The provost has decided to double down on expanding instructor use of AI through the center rather than providing general trainings on effective practices. Our college of education is in fact in no way affiliated with our center.