Equivalence is regarded as a central principle in contemporary Swedish educational policy. Hence, the concept of "equivalence" plays an important role in educational policy making practice in Sweden. A practice that can be described as processes of political consensus-making, in order to produce national guidelines for Education. A fundamental aspect of this practice is the rhetorical level in national documents for education. One important dimension, required by law, of this policy level is to determine the role of the schools in their mission of rearing democratic citizens. Even in these matters equivalence has worked as a guiding principle. In the 90:ies a historical change is at stake, regarding the policy issues of the schools´ rearing of citizens. "Equivalence" is challenged by another concept, "freedom of choice". This challenge has consequences for the political understanding of the citizen reared in the Swedish school. In this paper I will examine the role of the changed conceptual framework in the policy practice of citizen rearing in schools, in order to see what consequences this change has had on the political understanding of the ideal citizen that should be reared in Swedish schools today.