Haven't read the Netherlands/Sweden paper, but my first thought is that if their vocational education was already good and widely used, it could be the case tha

Haven't read the Netherlands/Sweden paper, but my first thought is that if their vocational education was already good and widely used, it could be the case that additional general content wasn't helpful, but that might be very different in a different country. In the U.S. I get the impression we have let our secondary vocational education programs kind of die on the vine, although community colleges have stepped into the gap in some cases. So I think we were starting from a poorer position than most of Europe, in regards vocational education.