Sweden's schools follow national educational guidelines so they are more like what we call charter schools in the U.S. than the voucher system some districts have in the U.S. and what DeVos argues for. Also, Sweden's students perform more poorly now than they did before vouchers were implemented, though of course people argue over the cause of the decline.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/is-sweden-proof-that-...

They’re not what we would call charter schools. For example, you can use school vouchers in Sweden for religious education.

Is this statement from the page I linked to wrong then?

> In contrast to American private schools, Sweden’s free schools don’t charge tuition — they draw on government funds to operate — and are required to follow Sweden’s national curriculum. They’re more comparable to American charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.

I mean I guess what part you’re focused on. The Swedish program is widely called a “voucher” program. It has the essential element of competition: per student funding follows the student. As your quote states, it’s like charter schools rather than tuition-charging private schools in that money doesn’t go through the parents, but directly to schools. But like the De Voss proposal, and unlike American charter schools, Swedish school choice encompasses a much wider variety of schools, including religious schools.

> Places like Sweden have school competition via vouchers

This system is also unique in the world and the results since its institution have been woeful. Massive increase in segregation, inflation in grades, bankruptcies where the pupils suddenly doesn't have a school. All because they need to market themselves as "good schools" to make the largest amount of profit.

For the same reasons they tend to establish themselves in places with socioeconomically strong families, since those kids needs less work, and are thus more profitable.

There's also a queue system in-place where the parents must enqueue their child into these "good" schools basically directly after birth. These kind of hidden signals is used to further stratify the pupils through both segregation and class. A government issued report suggested that there should be a draw instead of a queue to prevent these outcomes. This is of course vehemently opposed by the "free-school industry" (yes, ofc they added the "free" prefix).

This system is not something that any country should adopt, and luckily, we're so far unique about it (heard something about Chile (Chicago Boys remember?) but not sure that's still the case). There's a large majority to change this system, but unfortunately the current situation in parliament doesn't allow it.

It’s not unique. More than 2/3 of OECD countries have some sort of school choice. https://www.edchoice.org/engage/faqs/how-does-school-choice-...

> OECD’s reports show that, of the 53 participants, 25 countries’ governments (nine of which have top 20 PISA scores overall) provide vouchers and/or tuition tax credits for students to attend private schools (see accompanied table).

Not combined with state vouchers and for-profit schools.