> These aspects from the article sound like US charter schools.
Some charter schools. A minority. Others are run like tiny military academies, or have gone all-in on high-stakes testing, or profit by relying on low-paid short-term teachers with high turnover, or are mainly financial schemes/scams with schools attached (cf. the alternet link a few posts upthread).
All of the bits you listed actually sound precisely like my southern California suburban public elementary school experience in the mid–late 1990s. Unfortunately the school got constant pushback from the school district and state for not being excited enough about letter grades or standardized tests, but was able to mostly persist its culture through support from local parents.
"...teachers are trained to assess children in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. "
"All children receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are based on individualized grading by each teacher."
"If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it."
"In Finland parents can also choose."
But it may be that the finnish model is slipping anyway:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2013/06/is-finland-a-choice-les...
"Finnish eighth-graders today perform slightly lower than seventh-graders did in 1999."
I give them two decades.