New York City recently announced plans to open five city-owned grocery stores that promise prices roughly 30% lower than those at traditional supermarkets. The goal is straightforward: make groceries more affordable for families.
The proposal has sparked plenty of debate about whether it will work. But it also raises a broader question that extends beyond groceries: What happens if it does?
Imagine the city-operated stores consistently offer prices private grocery stores can’t match. Over time, some independent grocers struggle to stay open. A few close. Then a few more.
Eventually, families find themselves with fewer and fewer choices, not because anyone banned private grocery stores, but because they could no longer compete.
The government-run stores become the only option.
Whether or not that happens in New York remains to be seen. But the scenario reveals something important: when one provider has advantages others don’t, competition can gradually disappear.
As I thought about that possibility, I realized it describes the educational landscape many of us have inherited.
For generations, education in America has been dominated by one primary provider. While charter schools, private schools, microschools, homeschooling, and hybrid models exist, they educate a relatively small share of students. In most communities, families have one default option and a handful of alternatives that often operate with fewer resources and greater regulatory hurdles.
When those alternatives begin to grow, the conversation frequently centers on what they might take away from the traditional system.
Instead of asking whether alternative schools threaten the existing system, perhaps we should ask what happens when there are too few alternatives capable of competing at all.
Competition isn’t valuable because one provider wins. It’s valuable because no provider is guaranteed to win. Every school has to earn the trust of families. Every school has to continue improving because families have somewhere else they can go.
When meaningful competition disappears, those incentives begin to change. Innovation becomes harder. Responsiveness becomes less urgent. Choice becomes more limited.
None of this is an argument against public education. It’s an argument for something different. Healthy ecosystems rarely depend on a single model. We don’t expect one company to make every car, one hospital to provide every form of healthcare, or one grocery store to serve every neighborhood. We recognize that different families have different needs, and we generally believe better ideas emerge when organizations continually have to earn people’s trust.
Education deserves that same diversity.
The question isn’t whether every family should choose a different kind of school. It’s whether every family should have the freedom to.
