NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Measuring Adequate Yearly Progress
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires "adequate yearly progress," a level of improvement school districts and schools must achieve to ensure all students are proficient in reading and mathematics by 2013-2014. In technical terms, adequate yearly progress (AYP) refers to the growth rate in the percentage of students who achieve the state's definition of academic proficiency. Each state will set the AYP gains every school must meet to reach 100 percent proficiency at the end of 12 years.
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) also requires that every child be tested.  By testing all children, parents and teachers will know the academic achievement of every child, every group of students and all students.  This enables parents and teachers to work together to ensure that no child will be left behind and to ensure not only school-wide and individual progress, but subgroup progress as well.  This is why test scores will be broken out into the following sub-groups: economic background, race and ethnicity, English proficiency and disability. 
Currently Kansas measures performance by the percentage of students who are at each of five levels:  advanced, proficient, satisfactory, basic and unsatisfactory.  In the NCLB act, AYP was based on the premise and promise that in 12 years, every student must be at the proficient level or higher in both reading and mathematics.  To respond to NCLB’s requirement for proficiency, Kansas AYP performance will relabel satisfactory as “proficient,” relabel proficient as “advanced,” and relabel advanced as “exemplary.” 
How will measuring "adequate yearly progress" help improve my school?
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is an individual state's measure of yearly progress toward achieving state academic standards. It sets the minimum standard that over time increases the percent of students at proficient or above that states, school districts, and schools must achieve each year. No Child Left Behind raises the bar of expectations for all students - especially those ethnic groups and those disadvantaged students who are falling farther and farther behind and who are most in danger of being left behind.
It works like this: States start by defining adequate yearly progress - the measurement of academic improvement a school, district and state must achieve to ensure that at the end of 12 years, every student will be at least proficient in reading and mathematics.
Each state chooses where to set the initial academic achievement bar based on the lowest-achieving demographic group or based on the lowest-achieving schools in the state, whichever is higher. Once the initial bar is established, the state is required to "raise the bar" gradually to reach 100 percent proficiency at the end of 12 years. The initial bar must be raised after two years and subsequent thresholds must be raised at least once every three years.
The attached charts depict the starting points schools will use to compare the percent of students who are at the proficient level or above in their school as compared to the state.  Please note that there are two starting points:  one for kindergarten-8th grade and one for 9th-12th grade.  If, for example, you are a K-5 elementary school, you would use the Kindergarten-8 starting point.  If you are mainly a secondary school (e.g., 7-12) you would use the 9-12 starting point.