The article admits that blacks are fine in red states, which begs the question as to why that is.
I don’t believe money is the issue, but I do believe that money getting to student directly is a factor. If the money is eaten up by the administration, there not money in the world to satiate greed by the administration.
I don't think they are "fine" in all red states. I suspect there are two different factors at work here:
1. For many red states in the South, public schools in general are notoriously mediocre. In these states, it is probably true that black students aren't any worse than white students -- but most of these students (black and white) do poorly compared to public school students across the nation as a whole.
2. For red states in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains, blacks are a very small portion of the population and are not clustered in urban dumps like New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, etc. In these states, your average black student probably attends a predominantly white school. The influence of "ghetto culture" in schools isn't a factor in these states.