It became an annual autumn ritual as predictable as the falling leaves:

AYP, as in Adequate Yearly Progress.

On the upside, presentations were made while school districts, schools and groups of students were given grades, and large blue and gold keystone-shaped plaques for meeting AYP were handed out during photo opportunities for administrators.

On the downside, schools and, sometimes, entire school districts could be placed in Corrective Action Improvement Status after not meeting AYP four years in a row.

Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP, is a measurement defined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, whereby public schools' and school districts' performances are measured according to standardized tests.

Students were to have achieved 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by the 2013-14 school year.

As of this fall, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) replaced AYP with the School Performance Profile. PDE made the announcement Oct. 4.

In August, the U.S. Department of Education approved Pennsylvania's No Child Left Behind waiver request.

The purpose of the new system is to show the academic performance of the state's public schools, according to a PDE press release.

NASD Superintendent Joseph Kovalchik, NASD Director of Curriculum and Instruction Lydia Hanner and NASD Director of Data, Grants and Special Programs Dr. Kathleen E. Ott made the presentation about School Performance and Educator Effectiveness at the Oct. 28 NASD board of education meeting.

A key factor in NASD 2014-15 school year budget deliberations may be the need to hire teachers for remediation in Keystone Exams test subjects that students fail.

"They [students] have to retake it [the Keystones]," said Ott.

The NASD contingency fund for staffing in the 2013-14 budget is $200,000. That may need to be increased for the 2014-15 budget, Kovalchik told The Press following Monday night's meeting.

"We may have to hire additional staff to address that one issue [student remediation]," Kovalchik said.

"There's a lot of concern as to what it [School Performance Profile] will do for children of special needs," said school board Vice President Jane Erdo.

"This leaves too many questions, too, for which there aren't answers," said school board member Dr. Michael Baird.

The School Performance Profile, intended "to improve education and education accountability," according to Hanner, went into effect this fall in Pennsylvania for the 2013-14 academic school year.

The model for the program is based on what's known in education as "Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching," which the PDE is now requiring, but which NASD began implementing in 2006, Hanner said.

The "Framework" involves four "Domains" which include Planning and Preparation, Professional Responsibilities, The Classroom Environment and Instruction, with each divided into subcategories and descriptions.

In the PowerPoint presentation, Hanner used a pie chart to explain Measuring Educator Effectiveness 2013-14 as follows: Observation-Evidence, 50 percent; Effective Data, 20 percent; Teacher Specific Data, 15 percent, and School Building Data, 15 percent.

"In years past, student performance scores were not linked to teacher evaluation. Now they are," said Kovalchik.

"There's more accountability on student performance – more than ever," Kovalchik said.

"We're still looking at accountability," agreed Ott.

The focus areas are reading, writing, math and science.

The assessment areas are PSSA, Keystone Exams, industry standards and SAT/ACT.

The Keystone Exams will be given to ninth-grade students, i.e., the Class of 2017, in Algebra 1, biology and literature. Also, in 2015-16, the Keystone Exams will include English composition and civics and government.

Student assessment scores are used to define how well a school is making progress toward proficiency for all students, as well as to measure the academic progress of groups from one year to the next.

Other Academic Indicators are graduation rates and attendance rates.

Acceptable ranges for school performance are 70-79.9; 80-89.9 and 90-99.9.

Unacceptable ranges are 69.9-60 and 59.9-50.

The NASD academic scores are:

· Northampton Borough Elementary Schools: 80.8;

· Lehigh Elementary School: 80.0;

· Northampton Area Middle School: 77.6;

· George Wolf Elementary School: 73.9; and

· Northampton Area High School: 70.1.

"Quite frankly, we can do better than this," Kovalchik said.

NASD has about 390 teachers and 5,500 students.

The School Performance Profile is expected to be available for Pennsylvania's 3,000 public schools in December.

Parents, taxpayers and educators may check and compare the performance of schools at the PDE web site at pde.state.pa.us