Hostages No More: The Fight for Education Freedom and the Future of the American Child

by Betsy DeVos

Now a National Bestseller! From coronavirus lockdowns to critical race theory in the classroom, it has become crystal clear that America’s schools aren’t working for America’s students and parents. No one knows this better than Betsy DeVos.   Long before she was tapped by President Trump to serve as secretary of education, DeVos established herself as one of the country’s most influential advocates for education reform, from school choice and charter schools to protecting free speech on campus. She’s unflinching in standing up to the powerful interests who control and benefit from the status quo in education – which is why the unions, the media, and the radical left made her public enemy number one. Now, DeVos is ready to tell her side of the story after years of being vilified by the radical left for championing common-sense, conservative reforms in America’s schools.   In Hostages No More, DeVos unleashes her candid thoughts about working in the Trump administration, recounts her battles over the decades to put students first, hits back at “woke” curricula in our schools, and details the reforms America must pursue to fix its long and badly broken education system. And she has stories to DeVos offers blunt insights on the people and politics that stand in the way of fixing our schools.   For students, families and concerned citizens, DeVos shares a roadmap for reclaiming education and securing the futures of our kids – and America.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Politics

321 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 21, 2022

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 1 out of 5]

While reading I couldn't help but notice there is something so hollow to the vanity project Hostages No More by Betsy DeVos, a public figure who’s name brings eyerolls and exasperated sighs here in her hometown of Holland, Michigan. It isn’t the lackluster content, which offers nothing you haven’t heard before and even the backpedaling and rather salty commentary on the ‘undisciplined White House’ or ‘dysfunctional’ GOP senate aren’t even that interesting, but rather the evasive ways DeVos addresses her own arguments. If one wanted to truly understand the toxicity of “West Michigan nice”—the passive aggressive and evasive behavior that makes the middle-class people of the region often feel like fingernails on a chalkboard but in ways you can’t quite argue against without being told you are the aggressor—this book would be the perfect introduction. It often feels very unserious, particularly as she doesn’t even believe much of her own statements and her claims are so divorced from the reality of her history of actions that you might find yourself checking the cover to be sure, yes, this is Betsy DeVos’ book. DeVos confesses she ‘does not have a way with words,’ which is an understatement, and this book winds its way through generic talking points and bad faith rhetoric to deliver her ultimate point that she wishes to dismantle public education for school of choice between private and charter schools.

The book begins with a brief bootstraps myth building narrative about her family where DeVos describes a sanitized and idyllic version of the Holland, Mi of her childhood. Betsy DeVos is the daughter of Elsa and Edgar Prince and sister to Erik Prince (best known for his mercenary group Blackwater and war crimes such as the Nisour Square massacre). Her husband, Dick DeVos, inherited the Amway fortune and serves as CEO. Between the two families they are the largest political donors in the state of Michigan, closely tied with groups ranging anywhere from Focus on the Family and American Federation for Children, to groups like Moms for Liberty who have been in the news frequently of late for their campaign to ban books in public schools and libraries. They are also very involved in local politics, supporting Michigan GOP candidates such as Bill “Handsy” Huizenga (who wrote the anti-transparency bill to hide Russian investments in oil as well as signed on to attempt to invalidate Michigan voters ballots), and own most of downtown. Ask anyone who has worked in a Prince owned building will tell you how shady the property management company, Lumir is, and I have personally read an email from Elsa Prince stating that public restrooms attract “the wrong type of people to downtown”. It should be noted that these families are some of the largest donors to anti-choice groups, so the removal of bodily autonomy and medical privacy by the Supreme Court is largely funded by them. They also backed a failed re-election campaign for former Holland Mayor Nancy DeBoer who ran almost entirely on the messaging that allowing equal housing protections to queer people would ruin the local economy. Not, you know, their manipulation of local officials to continuously raise property rates and remove low income housing while also complaining “nobody wants to work anymore” in the minimum wage jobs in the same city they are making expensive to live within.

The Prince family is also known locally for astroturfing movements such as one in recent years to block housing protections for LGBTQ+ peoples and just last year against a redistricting to allow for more mixed income housing. Adding that Holland is a former sundown town and there is no mention of any of these operations in her book, one begins to see what Betsy really means when she claims teaching American history in public schools is about hating America. Which is always a bad argument, because if knowing something will make you dislike a country, maybe don’t do it in the first place. I think the shame should be on those who committed bad acts and not teachers for educating people on them. Had I learned about the US funding coups and propping up dictators across Latin America in school it would have felt a lot less of a betrayal to have to learn it on my own reading novels from outside the US.

The book is bookended by the standard right wing conversation about COVID that I’m sure everyone is already exhausted from hearing, making it a weird choice to frame everything between. As you can guess Bestie is upset that public schools were closed or online, something she says was shameful. She neglects to mention that both private and charter schools also did this, and locally tended to have stricter restrictions that lasted longer than the public schools, so the argument really feels disingenuous. After several pages of arguing that learning from the home is detrimental to education, she uses this to make the case for…wait for it…withdrawing from public schools and homeschooling.

Which is representative of how much of this book and her trains of thought work, less a logical or even rational building of points towards a proposed solution but as if each paragraph were chosen from a dartboard of conservative talking points while blindfolded with a fifth of bourbon. She brings up the sexual assault allegations against Trump and dismisses them by saying Bill Clinton had affairs, then awkwardly segues this into a lengthy and convoluted argument against Title IX in which she claims the real victim of sexual assault allegations are the boys. She heavily leans on the 2014 Rolling Stones article about the allegations at the University of Virginia that were later retracted to make a case that she believes Title IX is just a harbor for college women to lie about rape as a weapon against men. Throw in some bad-faith trans bathroom fearmongering and you can pretty much figure out how this section of the book goes.

There are a few surprising moments, Betsy comes out in favor of Red Flag laws, is rather critical of the Trump administration which she believes hindered her progress, and weirdly takes credit for the prosecution of Larry Nassar, but this book can be boiled down to two main ideas:
1. Obama era laws should be repealed and
2. any school is better than a traditional public school, simply because it is not operated by government. The government bit is interesting because much of Betsy’s plans involve funneling public funds into private schools, something the Supreme Court has opened the door for just this week. Much of this book is Betsy claiming she cares about the kids, but her record of vouchers and charter schools seems to indicate it is less about the kids and more about power and, simply put, privatization. Also she has a strong belief in theocracy that has been compared to a crusade, and not unlike the Children’s Crusade of her theocratic ancestors, it is one that is most harmful to the children involved.

Her claim that public schools are wasting money seems to sidestep how much DeVos over the course of her career has little respect for the legal guidelines of finance. In 2014 she hired Scott Jensen for her American Federation for Children 501(c), a man charges with multiple felonies for misusing public tax dollars for partisan political purposes and using the office as the Republican Assembly Speaker to direct that state employees to perform campaign work at public expense. Her All Children Matter PAC was fined $5.3million in 2008 for illegally funneling campaign money in Ohio, a fine that DeVos never paid. In her home state of Michigan, a 2014 report cited that DeVos’ school programs had fraudulently used state funds to the tune of $1billion, including operations costs for schools that were never actually built.

Very recent, Betsy’s own charter school orgs have put forth a petition, Let MI Kids Learn, to funnel millions of dollars in public school money towards private schools in Michigan and offers extended tax breaks to corporations who donate to private schools. It would not be a ballot proposal and is essentially buying legislation. Using a loophole in Michigan law that states a petitioner has no legal responsibility to tell the truth about a petition, the group has been asking for signatures under the guise that it would increase funding for public schools and lower taxes. Videos have surfaced online of the proposal group encouraging petitioners to lie in order to get signatures. If DeVos encourages lying to win, there’s little reason to take anything said in this book as truth. As James Baldwin wrote ‘ I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.’

Her claims that she is using school vouchers because she wants to help marginalized students and believes the public school system is racist against Black students also reads as very disingenous, particularly after a lot of handwringing about schools being ‘woke’ and baseless claims that they teach CRT in elementary schools. Also her husband started a charter school exclusively for white boys, so, sure Betsy, sounds legit. DeVos’ school of choice experiment began here in Holland, Mi, and is pretty widely regarded as a disaster. It caused massive white flight, with a 60% decline in white students from the public schools. In the 2009-2010 school year alone, 64% of choice students left the public school for a less diverse school district, and it has frequently been argued that DeVos’ school of choice is de facto segregation.

A major argument in this book is that American schools are underperforming, claiming public schools are below other countries, though none of her data adjusts for population size or anything, and many of her claims have been debunked even by the GOP thinktank Hoover Institution. Which is indicative of much of this book: make some claims and assume the reader will just trust that its real. Not unlike the Big Lie, which she does try to distance herself from to be fair. It all comes together for a really bizarre argument however. DeVos spends much of the book arguing that schools have failed students and that the American population is behind in all subject levels. Her solution is that these same people that have been failed by education should make the decisions instead of educators. Let that sink in. It’s the whole laughable idea that gumption alone is the only way to do anything and that any form of education is too biased. You are free to do whatever you want, except have an academically informed opinion.

Oh also Betsy DeVos was a Jeb! supporter and claims to have been reluctant to accept Trump as the party candidate. PleaseClap.gif

Simply put, this book is a half-hearted mashup of bland rhetoric and regurgitated talking points that never quite make the case for dismantling public schools that she thinks it does. The only thing clever about it is the masking of overt racism and class-warfare. The book is best summed up by her own metaphor: Bestie D argues that her school of choice program is like how we now have many streaming options from netflix, HBO, Disney, etc. and how much better is that than when everything was on Netflix. Personally, I’d rather pay less for fewer networks that have more on them than more for 20 that only have a few things I want, but the point isn’t actually the choices: its the privatization. Also the gatekeeping (Holland Christian, for example, is $800 a month to attend). She makes some half-hearted arguments, and admittedly there is certainly room for imporvement in education, but much of what she writes is unsupported in her arguments or turns a blind eye to crticism of her own program ideas. A major idea pushed here is that public institutions are too much bureaucracy without addressing why that might be the case and ignores that this is also a problem in the private sector as well. The arguments feel less about wanting to improve education and more about wanting to dismantle public institutions in general.

Yet somehow even more laughable than this book is EducationNext's review' of it that compares her to...get ready for this...Alyosha from The Brothers Karamazov. The author writes that Holland, Mi is 'the City of Churches, and, it is said, the social capital of the world.' Literally nobody says this. But if you hangout downtown you’ll find people saying the sangria is too spicy…

While I don't claim to have the answer to mass education, I do know that destroying it to replace it with christian nationalist privatized education is not it. Besty comes across as very hostile to any education that does not center white, straight, christian messaging to the point of actively funding groups that harm educators and librarians for self-serving reasons. Even the crusade against queer books is less about the books themselves and more about sewing distrust in public institutions. Bestie is the classic example of claiming something doesn't work, then purposely harming it so she can say "see?!" She is someone who believes the ends justify the means, and when those most harmed on the path are under-served communities and marginalized groups, she sees it as achieving. It's gross and all her posturing in this book is so flimsy. In closing, Betsy DeVos delivers hollow statements and backpedals on the more damning parts of the previous administration, but is certainly eager to keep her white christian nationalist movement going forward. She is a grifter and always will be.

[Mary Capps · Rating 1 out of 5]

A more accurate subtitle would be "The Fight for Freedom from Education" - DeVos's goal is not to provide a better education to American children, but to control educational opportunities and ensure those future generations don't learn critical thinking.

[MollyK · Rating 1 out of 5]

What. The. Fuck.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Look at all the close-minded Marxist “educators” who haven’t read the book.

[Zee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the type of book whose author alone tends to guarantee it poor reviews from partisans and non-readers. Since education is itself the single most important policy area but has seen minimal improvement for decades now, I certainly hope those like myself who tend to disagree with (or more likely, abhor) DeVos have given serious thought to the educational models she espouses and has long supported, because the more the current system/status quo continues along in mediocrity, the more her vision will take root.

This was highlighted and exacerbated by pandemic school closures—which Democrats and unions were more complicit in—and regardless of one’s views on the matter and the seriousness of its cause, what cannot be argued is that Dems lost that battle, and when you are perceived as being on the wrong side of the education battle, you’re often perceived as losing the war. The irony that the most progressive thing that could have possibly been done — reopen schools as soon as possible and prevent the loss of a collective year of learning, chiefly by underprivileged students — was discouraged by those who deem themselves to be the most progressive is not lost on DeVos and is hardly lost on anyone to the right of the far left. DeVos is right about this, and as the biggest name representing her cause and political side on the issue, Democrats MUST pay attention and listen rather than merely continue to insist Republicans do not fund education, especially given how much we already spend on it compared to most other countries. Of course, insufficient teacher pay has been primarily due to GOP ideology (and private schools are in no way beacons for sufficient teacher pay), but Dem overspending elsewhere cannot go unmentioned. When you add in the number of Democrats and leftists, past and present, who have considered or supported education “personalization” models she supports, you get a good argument, but also a national trend and, more likely, an impending reality. There is A LOT of bipartisan room for policies similar to those she has in mind, and regardless of whether the GOP steps off the ledge of insanity, if Dems continue to act as if they don’t need to listen to the rightmost third of the country, these policies are going to get passed and signed into law whether they like it or not.

However much CRT has been overblown by the right is likewise irrelevant. Not only has such a knee-jerk reaction been entirely predictable, but so has been the left’s insistence that there is nothing to see here, alongside its insistence that it doesn’t need to listen to anyone but its leftmost flank. The right would be much more open to it if it was not forced and if it felt the education system was already doing its job on the basics, but it is not. DeVos, of course, couldn’t leave without mentioning as much. Again, where one stands on the issue is irrelevant; no matter how much society needs social justice education, DeVos’s argument here is as emotional as her supporters’ support for it, and that is what changes minds. What does not change minds is forcing CRT into classrooms, or even proposing that we should without first winning public opinion. Once again, the means are just as important as the ends, and DeVos’s federally forceful approach should not hide the methodical state-level approaches she and others have long been using. Even if I think competent public schools should be our first approach for a variety of quantitative and qualitative reasons spelled out elsewhere, I must admit that Democratic federal leaders have largely botched this by emphasizing vision over practicality and have themselves forced quite a few things whose pushback and lack of efficacy cost more than what was gained. DeVos knows and notes this plentifully.

The other problem with such aloof insistences on the left, of course, is the key fact that if policy AND the fight for it do not organically change minds and ensure long-term progress, then they are by definition not progressive. See: the complete shock at the overturning of Roe V. Wade; the complete shock at the 2016 election; the white Democratic shock at the growing notion (reality) that the Spanish-speaking population isn’t inherently Democratic; the complete shock as to why parents would oppose their school boards’ enactment of policies they aren’t clarifying first; Youngkin’s win…the list goes on. As bad as historical, racial and scientific ignorance is on the right, in the long run, it is not as bad as the political and social ignorance on the left that has long enabled it and will continue to if the left continues to allow itself to be overrun by emotional arguments without calculating them first. If you’re smarter than I am, your results will prove it. The left’s results on education do not. I by no means believe the right is stronger on this; I just know that because we live in the real world, we must acknowledge reality.

I mention all of this because while some choose to remove themselves from reality, DeVos and others who believe what she believes do not (at least as far as her success with her education agenda goes.) She has long been in it for the long game, and she knows how to win. Her keystones are school choice, vouchers, charter schools, public-private partnerships, new types of schools, parental autonomy, bureaucratic noninterference, etc. In light of the current makeup of the Supreme Court and its recent decisions, these approaches will almost certainly have their paths paved judicially for years to come, making it that much more mind-numbing any time Democrats will again fail to listen and adapt, only to cry foul when other inevitable rulings enshrine the legality of more private/religious-public linkages.

I am in no way ideologically opposed to any her policy ideals, and believe it would be evil for anyone to be if they were proven to improve educational outcomes. I am actually a theoretical fan of most of them, and they have each proven themselves in a number of isolated situations. But I just want the data. Give me the results. Don’t tell me your philosophy; tell me the history of your philosophy, and if it’s not pretty, make a competent argument as to why your tweak to it is different this time. Results alone validate ideologies—or, more often, don’t.

It’s impossible to be a fan of the U.S. education system in general, and she cites many of the same reasons for this as those she disagrees with do. But like her enemies, instead of building agreement on her policy, she’d rather just push it through if given the chance. She rightly points out unions’ and politicians’ decades-long complicity in stifling different educational models, so no wonder. The strengths and weaknesses of her ideology and others like it have been detailed in dozens of books as well as many reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere, and need to be consulted before books like this are read. But as far as this book goes, I was unimpressed. Anyone who disliked her originally, reads the book, and says they were not pleasantly surprised by several things would by lying. There were some highlights, I genuinely think she means well (although I believe she is ignorant of the ways in which her policies will not and have not gone well), and some of the models she espouses and supports have seen success.

However the problem with something as important as education is that you can’t go writing books about individualized bootstrap mythologies, personal narratives, and how your way works without putting in the work to list your evidence at length and directly addressing the outright failures that have arisen from it. And with education, your reasons and evidence better be listed AT LENGTH. She of course quotes several statistics and includes many (incomplete) success stories, but we’re talking tens of millions of children here, as well as not a few examples of well-documented failures of schools and/or models she supports that she fails to address. She almost entirely omits the (somewhat sizable and/or problematic) weaknesses of her specific, ideal policies, some of which are mentioned in the most-liked review for the book here, which should be read. Like many education freedom and personalization advocates, she incessantly brings up how our systemic approach is over a century old yet never acknowledges the importance of national standardization of some sort or the myriad issues that arise when parents drunk on ideology and cultural isolation have full reign over what their kids learn and where they learn it. She notes ballooning bureaucratization, but ignores legitimate reasons as to why that might be the case, and naturally fails to mention that the private sector can be guilty of this, too (see: healthcare). She notes rising costs, but seemingly ignores what privatization and choice have nonetheless done to tertiary education, rightly noting the federal government’s botching of loan structures, but that’s it. In past and subsequent book talks and events, when asked specifically about the pitfalls of, say, vouchers for charter schools or systemic mediocrity of a system in Ohio, she almost never answers the question (I say almost only because I have yet to see when she has). She also takes a lot of cheap shots and easy swings, and seems largely oblivious to the extents to which her blame games can be turned around on her and the GOP more broadly. But perhaps the worst part is that because the book’s tone is emotional and narrative-based, there is almost nothing new for someone who already follows education closely. This ‘accessibility’ will sadly but predictably validate supporters who think the book makes a great argument, and will likewise validate detractors, who will rightly see that she didn’t make a strong one (which I think could be made.) Even if you’re for school choice, this book should not impress you. The entire book reminded me of what I’ve read of Thomas Sowell, who always seems to get half the story wholly right, and since their supporters look up to them, you’ll be hard pressed to find a single one more enlightened on the topic than they are, which doesn’t speak well of the state of the nation. Unfortunately such a heavily one-sided argument is just another sign of the times, its minds and its politics.

[Barbara S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A look at the possibilities for education without politics

This is a glimpse into how the education industry is perpetuating adult power and political interests rather than giving all children the freedom to learn. I am more impressed with Betsy decides dedication than ever. A must read!

[Cheryl Kloda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly feel "Hostages No More", by Betsy DeVos is worth reading. The author comes across as very sincere. I believe she is the kind of person who cares about the education of America's Children. I agree that when there is School Choice everyone benefits. The students who really need School choice are those whose parents can't afford a Private School. Every Child learns in a different way. One size doesn't fit all! Unfortunately, many in The Teacher's Union, do not put the student's interest first. Betsy DeVos is correct. Having a choice of Good Public Schools, Charter Schools and Private Schools is the way to go. All children will benefit.

[Mike Horne · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you think Betsey DeVos is evil or incompetent, you should read this book (at least the first half). Looking at the reviews, people come to this book with their political lens and see what they want to see.

It is not great (much too long). But you have to understand how much the teacher unions hate her.

If you think that police unions care about justice, then you might think that teacher unions care about kids (both of them don't--they care about police and teachers). DeVos believes in disrupting our public school system. That will disrupt school teachers.

The attack on her as a racist plutocrat is absurd. I think her idea of education is utopian, but it is better than the status quo.

I like her!

[MFire · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book runs counter to the dogma of my political tribe and is written by opposing scum that is the enemy of that tribe. Reading anything counter to my current belief structures could cause painful cognitive dissonance. Since Betsy DeVos is an obvious partisan hack, there is no reason to read this book because I know it's trash. I am not a partisan hack. I am a critical thinker. The right just wants to control me. I must be diligent and speak out. Silence is Violence, War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, and Ignorance Is Strength.

[Mike Hawkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute eye-opening account of the school system in the United States. A must read for anybody concerned with the freedom to choose education!

[Jenny · Rating 1 out of 5]

Has Betsy ever even seen a public school in person? Screw this hosebeast and her anti-education propaganda

[Coyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"By far the shortest part of the book tells the story of DeVos’ life and how she came to be Secretary of Education, what she did as Secretary of Education, and why she quit the job on January 7, 2021. This was all interesting, and while reading I thought that I would liked to have read a bit more about her mixed in with the policy discussion. On reflection, I realized that the life of an affluent socialite probably wasn’t all that interesting and that we probably have the best bits already. The more I think about it, the more I think that she was right to present the materials this way.

And for what it’s worth, I was wrong about Betsy DeVos. I had assumed that when she was named Secretary of Education, she was just another billionaire place-holder in high office. That’s not automatically a bad thing at the Cabinet level in the Executive Branch–most of the real work of government is done by career employees and the person at the top doesn’t actually affect all that much (as every President for the last seventy years has discovered). In fact, she actually did have quite a bit of political experience. Granted it was largely state-level experience, but it was real experience nonetheless. So I should not have just dismissed here. She knew far more about what she was doing than most freshmen legislators."

Read the rest here: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/schaeff...

[Christine Persun · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not read - I wouldn’t be able to stomach it, but I do have a background in educational policy and spent a lot of time in graduate school studying up on this woman. Anyone who knows anything about education knows DeVos is WRONG in just about every claim she makes. Just take a look at her credentials - how did she end up even being considered for Secretary of Education???

Support your public schools damn it.

[Chuckdee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Methinks the teachers unions are shelling out single stars…

[Sara · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yikes. I disagree with much of this book. Her ghost writer did a decent job so it's readable. But it's clear she's oblivious how her astronomical wealth and privilege as an heiress married to a billionaire makes her unaware of the realities of working families and their children, and certainly not what it takes to develop and retain a large workforce of talented teachers across our massive country.

[Rachel B · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 stars

This book starts out with a bit of background on DeVos's upbringing, but mostly focuses on her career path. She walks readers through her experiences working for education reform and school choice policies at various levels - ultimately, as the former U.S. education secretary.

I agreed with a lot of the author's thoughts regarding education freedom, such as that parents have the constitutional right to direct their children's education, that school choice (especially the kind that offers vouchers or K-12 Educational Savings Accounts) is the best way to serve all students well, and that education policies should firstly be about what's best for the children being educated, rather than the adults in the system.

I didn't realize that teacher unions donated money to political campaigns, so that was something I was pretty horrified to learn.

I think a lot of people assume that because DeVos is a Republican, and President Trump is who appointed her to the position of education secretary, that she is a Trump supporter. Her book makes it pretty clear that while she worked under him while in office, she wasn't much of a fan.

That said, DeVos is quite tied to Republicanism, so there's a certain amount of Republican vs. Democrat talk in the beginning, especially. I'm not either, and I wish that it was easier to find books by people who are more middle-of-the-road, like me. There are more than two political parties in the U.S.!

Overall, it was an interesting, informative book. There were a few parts that felt long to me.

Note: There is some mild profanity.

[Alexandria Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

First and foremost, I view government schooling as a government sponsored job program for adults. It’s not about kids. The unions know this. The administration knows this. Yet somehow the public and parents are always the last to realize that these strangers you let watch your kids for 8 hours a day don’t care about you or your kids.

Betsy does a great job at recounting her personal history and story. Her life story is fascinating. I love how she came to the conclusion that no amount of charity will solve some of the bigger societal issues.

Betsy’s recounting of interacting with politicians is funny and interesting from Elizabeth Warren, to Susan Collins, Mike Pence, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and others that I can’t remember to list. I listened to the audiobook so I kind of forget but there was some senator who sounded decent who I had never heard of before.

School choice is the civil rights issues of our time. Yes. There is less education freedom in America than England! In England, you can use tax dollars to go to govt schools, charter schools, religious schools etc. If you want PARENTS and families to be able to make education choices for what’s best for their children you need to support education freedom / school choice. The RICH already have school choice, who do you think pays for private schools? It’s the poor and the people trapped in the wrong zip code that don’t have choices.

Americans must free themself from an education model designed before the telephone.

[Vincent Lombardo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this memoir difficult and irritating to read. The narrative shifts back and forth in time, and there are too many minor and boring details. Since there are so many other things that I would rather read, I gave up.

I decided to read this book after seeing Betsy DeVos speak at the City Club of Cleveland. (My wife and I spoke to her afterwards, and she was very gracious and took a lot of time to talk to us and others.) If you want to know what this book is about, watch the City Club Forum, here: https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2022/...

The forum is one hour. City Club CEO Dan Moulthrop did a great job interviewing DeVos, and she is challenged many times during the Q&A period.

[Jon Webber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This got better as I went. I got bogged down in the middle, but her suggestions at the end are wonderful. As a professor of 20 years and a former public school teacher, we need school choice in the worst way. if reading this is too hard consider watching "Waiting for Superman" or "Miss Virginia" Thankfully, educational innovation and freedom are finally coming. Please put the children and students ahead of the system.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Coming from a family with teachers, principals, and members of the board of education, this was a slap in the face to all of them. The lack of any background in education was very apparent. The ideas in this book do a disservice to any children, parents, and teachers involved with public education. What a mess!

[Robert Koslowsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

After meeting with local school officials in 2021 on curriculum being taught in K-12 schools, I picked up Betsy Devos’s book, Hostages No More (2022). Her analysis reinforced a number of the concerns I raised over the emergence of ethnic studies and Critical Race Theory (CRT) within the public school curriculum.
First, on page 90, Ms. Betsy Devos, a former secretary of education in the federal government, wrote, “Good teachers want to teach. Children want to learn. And parents want a say in their children’s education. The problem is the [public] education establishment - led by the school union bosses.”
I once was a big advocate for public schools in both Georgia and California where my three daughters were raised. After experiencing and seeing what has been going on during the last decade or so, I’ve withdrawn my support of public schools and have become an advocate for school choice and ensuring other parents and grandparents can opt for charter, private, or parochial (church) schools.
Currently three of my five grandchildren have left the public school system because of their right to choose.
Devos correctly points out that “[M]ost government decisions - but especially education - should be made in the states and local communities, closest to the people they will affect.” (p.91)
I agree that Washington, D.C. bureaucrats and national union leaders should not be dictating decisions about education for towns or cities. And certainly not pushing a “woke”agenda that demands young children be taught critical race theory and gender identity.
Devos notes, on p.261, “Parents — especially many minority parents — just want their children to be educated period . . . Our current education system is the definition of systemic racism — it is designed to hold poor black and Hispanic children hostage to the agendas of those who run it.”
Ironically it was the Coronavirus pandemic that made parents and grandparents aware of our deteriorating public education system. “The very children the people who run our public schools claim to care about the most,” writes Devos. “In an egregious display of hypocrisy and ruthlessness, the school union bosses and public education establishment made every excuse to not open schools. They shifted goalposts. They made endless demands - few of them related to the pandemic or public health in any way - before they would even think about allowing children to return to the classroom . . . They treated or children like bargaining chips. Like hostages. Pawns in a fight for power and resources - and ideology.”
Not only were parents upset over their children being kept out of school, they discovered through Zoom calls that many activist teachers were teaching the children to hate their country, and even to hate themselves. Parents “saw lesson plans labeling the foundation of the American dream - of hard work and achievement - as a racist conspiracy, purposely designed to oppress certain people. COVID-19 lay bare the failings of the [public school] system. What parents saw when their children were sent home fed the movement.”
And what happened with these unnecessary lockdowns of schools?
On September 1, 2022, The Department of Education’s first look at test-score trends since the pandemic began reveals “the worst drop in math and reading scores in decades for students in fourth grade, a crucial indicator for educational and economic trajectory [1].”
And parents became even more incensed when they were labeled terrorists by union leaders and the U.S. Department of Justice, simply for fighting for better schooling.
The fight for student choice and local control continues.
Be sure to read Hostages No More.

[1] B. Chapman & D. Belkin, "Fourth-Grade Test Scores Plummet," WSJ, September 1, 2022

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elisabeth DeVos, _Hostages No More_ provides an account of her childhood (hardly as privileged as her critics suggest) and her path through school choice activism to appointment as Secretary of Education, and, in more detail, an account of the bureaucratic politics of Washington, DC.

Secretary Devos did not mention her unique qualification for the position; her undergraduate degree was Economics. Like Milton Friedman, Secretary DeVos remarks the glacial pace of technological innovation in the education industry. Secretary DeVos laments the institutional lobotomization by the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel (the "public school system") of children of low-income and minority parents trapped in wretched and dangerous inner-city schools. Why not enact policies which give to individual families the power to determine which institution shall receive the taxpayers' $15,080 per pupil-year (2018-19 US average) sub-adult education subsidy?

The "public school system" (the policy which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy to facilities operated by government employees) originated in theocratic imperatives in the religious colonies of British North America (search "that old deluder, Satan") and, later, anti-Catholic bigotry (search "Bible riots"). The "public" school system has become a make-work program for dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel, a source of padded construction, contracting, and supplies contracts for politically-connected insiders, and a venue for State-worshipful indoctrination.
UPDATE (ymd = 2022-12-22)
My first rating gave _Hostages No More_ three stars. Elisabeth DeVos has given us a memoir that centers on her attempts, as Secretary of Education, to improve life for the fifty million sub-adult US residents trapped in the $764 billion per year (2018-19 total) State-monopoly K-12 credential industry. My literary diet seldom includes biographies, autobiographies, or memoirs. I was disappointed with the lack of detailed criticism of the current structure of the State-monopoly credential racket. Elisabeth DeVos has a degree in Economics. She can make the case for parent control of education and for a profit-motivated market in education services. She has, elsewhere, made this case. I have reconsidered my reaction. A memoir is not a policy brief. A policy brief is not a recipe book.
Elisabeth DeVos worked within the Constitutional restraints of her office. Her predecessor, Arne Duncan, did not, disrupting local school systems with "Dear Colleague" letters that threatened legal entanglement with civil rights laws for disparate impact. The Constitution gives to Congress (and by extension, the Executive Branch) no authority over the education industry (or the pension industry, the charity industry, the agriculture industry, or the medical services industry).
UPDATE (ymd = 2022-12-24)
Secretary DeVos acknowledges the restraints of Constitutionally limited government and federalism (subsidiarity, many local policy regimes). The Secretary of Defense has more legitimate control over the K-12 credential industry (the DOD schools, for children of DOD employees stationed overseas). The Secretary of Interior has more legitimate control over the K-12 credential industry (the Bureau of Indian Education schools). The Secretary of Education exercises no legitimate authority over the five service academies (Air Force, Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Merchant Marine).

[Hector · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't hate me for reading! If it makes you feel any better, I checked it out from the library, so no additional dollars were used to fund the DeVos empire. :D
I chose to read this book because I feel that I do not give adequate time and space to hear the "other side." Hostages reminds me that sometimes it's ok just to assume that you're not missing anything -- sometimes people are just that misguided.
While I disagree with so many of DeVos's beliefs and actions, it would be a lie to say that we don't agree on some things. That's the funny thing about this country—we're constantly portrayed as a society with only two warring factions, one red and one blue, when the truth is that we live in a fascinating shade of purple when you get down to the core of any issue, including education.
The problem with this book, however, is that its central plea for education reform is premised solely on a single person's (passionate) ideas but is presented absent of reasonable (and verifiable) data and completely ignores the real-world implications of what such actions would have on millions of children in this country. Do I want public education to be more innovative and nimble? Absolutely! Are publically funded vouchers, particularly for those who already have the means to afford a private education, the solution to that problem? Probably not. It's just poor writing. Just because you really want something different doesn't necessarily mean that your idea is the best and will solve everything (or anything). Is screams Veruca Salt (of the Wonka, not musical, variety).
I also find it foul that two years of retrospection was necessary to call out the dysfunction and recklessness of the Trump Administration. How lovely that on January 6, you felt that the President had gone too far and that you would no longer stand for it. Many of us were there well before the Access Hollywood tapes. Thank you for joining the party.
This isn't just a partisan swipe—DeVos' red line was simply too little too late, and no small swipes in a memoir will ever be enough to recuse her from the complicity of harm she imposed during her tenure in an Adminstration of hate. Such actions undermine DeVos' credibility and lend even more to a disingenuous tone.
I believe that Betsy DeVos cares about children. The problem is that care is not enough. The education system's obsession with average (I actually liked the way she characterized that) cannot be fixed by caring a whole lot. Like the countless other education "reformers" operating in the space, DeVos' needs to be reminded that the communities she purports to help need no more saviors. Please leave the discussion about "what we need" to us.

[Erin Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

So......what can I say? I think it's important for people to read books that confirm their opinions, but also to read "what the other side thinks" and that brought me to this book. Regardless of your political views, it is hard to deny that she was serving as Sec of Edu during a historically signficant time in US history - not just Trump but also Covid. There's a great deal of interesting history in her book. I enjoyed learning a bit of her background and also her take on Trump and Pence, at different times during her tenure. There's a lot she has to say that made me mad. And a lot she had to say made me nod in agreement. In the end, she's a rich conservative old white lady with both good and bad ideas. No different from most of the other leaders we see, on both sides of the political line. I dare you to read this book and not find it interesting, even while having some sections upset you or cause you to roll your eyes. No one is in agreement as to what is the best way to improve schools, so I think it's important to be aware of all ideas/sides as we all strive to improve outcomes for children in America. In conclusion, yes, I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in education issues - you won't likely agree with everything she says, but you would learn a little bit about history/school choice viewpoint, etc., which is what reading is all about!

[Randal White · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am well aware of the reviews of this book (written by people who I really doubt read it). And I have to admit, I am not of fan of Ms. DeVos. But, in the interest of expanding my horizons, I wanted to give the book a chance.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. Even a basic reading into her background will reveal an unabashed 1%'er, with an utter disdain for public education. Yet she tries to whitewash her privileged upbringing (just admit you come from money, and move on). It's all in her tone, in her very being, that comes across as disingenuous. Government is bad, rich people shouldn't have to send their children to a public school with the unwashed masses, and if we would just listen to our betters (her), we would all be better off.
I made it through the book. It wasn't easy. I ended up feeling repulsed by the author. Why someone who "doesn't have a way with words" thinks she should be the person telling the rest of us how to live is the utmost in hypocrisy.
I need a shower after this one. Ugh!

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Much like Amway and its products, this book relies on the poorly educated to ensure it's success. I couldn't help but feel like it's a rip off of other works. No originality, just rubbish talking points in story form. The disdain the author has for public schools (and regular people in general) is very poorly hidden. The author was educated at the Holland Christian High School, a private school located in her home town of Holland, Michigan. I was not a fan of Betsy Devos prior to reading this book and that has not changed. This books was written by someone who has never had to work a real job and it shows. It's rich to hear criticism from the ivory tower.

Kids do not need to "be saved from public schools."

I gave it a chance. I read it all. I wish I had not. It is a bad book.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Betsy DeVos was one of the more effective cabinet members in the Trump administration. However, it's really hard to be effective when the entire Department of Education is against school choice and strongly in the pockets of the teacher's union. This book is titled Hostages No More because of the way the teacher's union have forcefully, vocally, and adamantly anti-school choice.

The book is in part DeVos's autobiography, and part her record as Secretary of Education. She fought hard and valiantly for school choice, particularly for charter schools. Her advocacy was right, but I fear, short term, because the education swamp is very hard to overcome.

[LAMONT D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly, Betsy DeVos deserves a ton of credit for taking a stand against the powerful school unions and the far left with their radical and destructive narrative regarding our schools/education. I knew it was bad, but I did not realize how bad it was and how much grief, abuse and threats she endured during her time as the Secretary of Education for President Trump. Ridiculous and again it shows you how divided a country we are and how much the rhetoric has turned vile and vicious from the left in the public and private arenas. A few pictures are included in the book as well as a very helpful section in chapter 10 entitled "What's A Parent to Do?"

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Betsy DeVos gives her first hand experience as the Director of Education. This book covers a brief history about the Department of Education and some of the policies enacted by different administrations. The amount of bureaucracy and politics in the Department of Education is sad. The education industry is broken and many of the problems stem from the Federal Government projecting into local school districts. DeVos is strongly committed to educating students and providing opportunities.

[Roger Custer · Rating 4 out of 5]

My wife cautioned me that most memoirs from cabinet secretaries are not worth reading, but this exceeded the expectation she set. DeVos explains her philosophy of education freedom and how it will bring more success for kids while America is falling behind. Her life's work in this area is inspiring and the book is worth reading.