Close the Dept of Education completely, eliminate the federal income taxes that are used to corrupt state and local representatives, and let parents control the way their children are educated.
This is not a proper constitutional function of the federal government.

There should be a separation between state and education as there should be between state and anything it can mandate. If the state is involved in education it will always teach the children that socialism, communism, tyranny of any name is actually freedom and institute slavery to the state by raising up the slaves who will demand it. Don't let fear that if you abolish the department immediately and remove their ability to tax for education that education itself will disappear, it will right itself almost immediately if you leave the money (property) of the individual with the individual they will make the best choices for their children.

mediocrity is what the government run schools strive to accomplish. It would be wonderful if Mr. Sowell could/would address the congress.

I was a ghetto rat, and know first-hand about the abysmal schools therein. Let's see, where to begin.
I attended Detroit Public Schools in the 70s. In every school I attended, there was a teacher who was a paedophile. Everybody in the schools knew it; nobody did anything about it. If someone made a stink loud enough to rock the boat, the cops weren't called. The offending teacher was just moved to another school. The union protected them.
There were never enough books. We had to share them. The taxpayer money was also supposed to supply us kids with pencils, paper and equipment. Note the "supposed to" in there. At each level of administration, as federal money passed from Washington to the schools, everybody took their cut. There was nothing left by the time the school principals took their final cut. For example, in my high school biology class, 45 kids had to make do with 3 antiquated microscopes.
Since Detroit's population has dropped a lot I'm sure this no longer applies, but in the 70s, overcrowding was massive. The classes were intended to hold 25-30 kids each. Ours were 45+. The desks were crammed in so tight that you had to climb over the rows to get in or out.
I don't know if it was burnout or they just didn't give a damn, but teacher apathy was standard. We got bare-bones-minimum education. Just enough to pass the federally-mandated tests. Sometimes they spent the whole school year teaching us the literal tests. I don't know if the same tests were administered every year or they somehow fraudulently obtained copies, but they were exact matches. Some teachers didn't even show up for class. My high school history teacher used to blow in at the beginning of class, hand us quiz papers that were multiple choice, true or false and matching questions, then blow right back out. She never collected them again for grading.
Since funding depended solely on the number of students moving up from grade to grade and graduating, nobody got left back. I graduated with three people who couldn't read.
You didn't graduate from Detroit Public Schools, you survived them. It was jungle law. The object of your education was to obtain the necessary skills to avoid being beaten, shot, stabbed, or raped.
Since parent apathy was as prevalent as teacher apathy, I don't know if local parent-driven school systems will work in every community. But perhaps if it is no longer a federal juggernaut, things will change for the better.

If a representative is bought and paid for by unions he or she has to do their bidding. Once the votes are counted we will know who they are ;-)

God bless Mr. Sowell. May he continue to come out of retirement from time to time to comment on things that need commenting on.

So what does the perfect education system look like?

The Federal Government has zero place in education according to the Constitution. The Department of Education should be closed down permanently and no Federal funds should be going to education in any way shape or form. Why? Because effective management of anything does not come at arm's length - and particularly in government.

States have the Constitutional authority to involve themselves in education, but if they get involved they should limit themselves to the funding - not the policy or standards.

Personally, I think that the best education is community driven and it starts with parents. Parents have to have a hand in examining the curriculum and then determining how they want their children to be educated - and then pay for it. That's the problem with the public education system we have - parents have little or no say in the matter from either a curriculum or an expense perspective.

I support giving parents lots of options - from internet-based learning (Khan Academy is excellent for hard sciences) to parochial schools to charter schools and home schooling. The only caution I would give is that part of an education is in the social graces that can only be taught in a group setting. I know many home schoolers who are technically very astute, but are socially not just awkward, but infantile. I don't think any true learning comes without practice, and many of the social skills require a LOT of practice.

Rather than adding to the confusion, it might be enlightening to read what Mr. Jefferson had to say about the goals of public education:
To give every citizen the information he needs tor the transaction of his own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence to functions confided to him by either; To know his rights, to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgement; And in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
Mr. Jefferson suggests that the schools focus on reading, writing, arithmetic, geometry and on the "outlines of history" and geography in order to achieve these objectives.
Perhaps Mrs. Devos can re-start us toward these goals, by elimination of the Federal control of education and related bureaucracy./