Question

Beginning in 1997, New York State has published annual "report cards" (available on the internet) that provide information on a variety of measures of the "success" of elementary and secondary school systems. In examining the data for 1996, a reporter for the Syracuse Newspapers, observed that a relationship appeared to exist between academic performance and the level of student poverty for the 124 schools in central New York area. To evaluate this relationship, a regression model was formulated as:

RD_i = β_o + β₁LUN_i + u_i

where:

RD_i = proportion of 3rd grade students in school i achieving a "mastery" level score
LUN_i = proportion of students in school i eligible for free or reduced price lunches

State an appropriate set of null and alternative hypotheses concerning the parameter β₁.

Answer 1