Betsy DeVos’ mission to rescue the teachers’ union ‘hostages’

The philanthropist and veteran school reform advocate, who served as education secretary under President Trump, says the Covid pandemic has been a game changer. “In the past two years, the failures of the school system have been exposed to families in a way never before seen,” Betsy DeVos told me over the phone Monday. “I think it’s accelerating to the moment where we will be able to implement significant policy changes to support families and children and not the system.”

This “system” is the subject of Ms. DeVos’ new book, No More Hostages: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child. The title comes from Horace Mann, the 19th-century politician and educator widely credited with founding the public school apparatus. “We who work in the sacred cause of education,” Mann once wrote, “have the right to hold all parents hostage to our cause.” In a book that is part memoir and part school reform manifesto, Mrs DeVo’s convincing case for freeing the hostages.