Bring Lawyers, Guns and Money. National Standards, Vocational Training and the Education of Low-Income Youth

What does it take to keep low-income kids in education and out of trouble? This paper explores the interrelated questions of why countries enact different education reforms and the impacts of these reforms on NEETs, or youth who are in neither employment nor education and training. Interventions to augment skills of disadvantaged youth gravitate toward two poles: the social investment model and the top-down standards-setting model. The social investment model features extensive vocational training, strong involvement of the social partners, and substantial local autonomy for teachers and schools. The top-down standards-setting model features comparably limited vocational training and national standards for curricula and student assessment that curtail the professional autonomy of teachers. Cross-national differences in education reforms reflect fundamental differences in policy-making. Countries with the social investment approach rely more on the big guns of organized business and labor; whereas countries with national standards turn to lawyers and a legalistic regulatory regime in the absence of strong labor market partners. The absence of strong social partners also contributes to the weakness of programs to train low-income youth. Ironically, the national standards designed to reduce educational inequalities have exacerbated educational poverty; whereas, the social investment model has been associated with lower levels of NEETs. The paper supports these assertions empirically with case studies of Britain, Germany, and Denmark, and statistical tests of individual-level Eurostat data.