This study monitored the five-year dynamics of the plant-soil system in the coal gangue yard at Sima Coal Mine of Lu'an Group from 2009 to 2013. The fixed plots were established to use spatial dynamics to represent temporal changes. The assessment was made on the communities characteristics, soil physical and chemical properties, and the comprehensive ecological performance of the plant communities at the early phase of reclamation after reforestation. The results were as follows:1) The evaluation criterion of ecological performance included five ranks:"Optimal", "Fine", "Middle", "Low", "Lower" at the early stage of restoration on coal waste pile. Referential to the first year, the five-year recovery achieved the "Optimal" rank according to the communities characteristics, soil physical and chemical properties, and the comprehensive ecological functions in the reclaimed coal gangue yard. Notwithstanding the ecological performance of natural secondary community also showing the "Optimal" rank in this study, natural secondary community was not the perfect object for reforestation. This result predicted that the ecological performance of reforestation in coal gangue yard might be better than natural secondary community with recovery age. 2) Given sufficient time, the reforestation and the spontaneous herbal recovery would achieve the goal of vegetation reconstruction in the mining area. 3) By employing the AHP-FCE model, using the first-year as benchmark, the performance criteria could be made for ranking the ecological performance in the early phases of reclamation. This was advantageous over the traditional method that taken natural secondary communities as the reclamation goal, whose optimism was usually questionable for high uncertainty. In this regard, this study attempted to provide an innovative way in the practice of ecological performance assessment. Moreover, this paper would play an actively model-driven role in advancing the scientific implementation, management, and evaluation of the ecological restoration in the coal gangue yard.