The Academic Progress Rate numbers for Kansas University’s 18 athletic programs were satisfactory according to the NCAA, meaning no new punishments will be handed out this year.

KU released this year’s APR data Thursday, before the NCAA makes its release next week. Three KU sports – men’s cross country, women’s cross country and men’s golf – had a perfect 1,000 score, meaning 100 percent of its scholarship athletes both stayed at Kansas and stayed eligible in the past three years.

In addition, three teams in danger of dipping below the NCAA’s penalty-free floor of 925 – baseball, football and women’s basketball – all showed marked improvement from a year ago.

“Generally, the numbers and the progress are very positive,” associate athletic director Jim Marchiony said.

APR is calculated by giving athletes on scholarship one point per semester for remaining eligible and one point for remaining on campus. The points then are calculated for each team and divided by the highest possible point total. That percentage then is translated to another point total, with 1,000 being the highest. So, a score of 925 essentially means a team compiled 92.5 percent of all possible points.

A score under 925 doesn’t necessarily mean looming penalties. A program only is subject to penalties if its score is below 925 and an underclassmen fails to pick up a single point in a given semester – that is, leaves campus and leaves in poor academic standing.

KU’s baseball team had this problem a year ago. It had a score of 887 and a player leave the program in bad standing. Because of that, it lost .36 of it’s already-low allotment of 11.7 scholarships for this academic year.

No sports at KU will have any penalties assessed for APR-related reasons this fall. Women’s basketball had a 2005-06 score of 944, football had a 945 and baseball a 923 – all improvements over past scores. Though baseball’s score still is under the 925 floor, a margin-of-error calculation for smaller squads puts it in a safety zone.

With three years of APR data in the books, the NCAA is starting to implement historical penalties to go along with the short-term “contemporaneous” penalties – as if it wasn’t confusing enough. Historical penalties are given to long-term averages under 900, and could include public reprimand, loss of scholarship, loss of practice time and – in extreme cases – postseason bans.

The Jayhawks have no programs in such danger yet. And with the improvement of its borderline teams, the hope is that they never do.

“We’ve gone up,” associate athletic director Paul Buskirk said, “in all three of them.”