The FEAPs Have Changed: What Florida Educators Need to Know | Uncomplicate Ed

As of August 25, 2026, Florida’s revised Educator Accomplished Practices, or FEAPs, are officially in effect.

If you’ve been an educator in Florida, you’ve likely heard of the FEAPs. They show up in teacher preparation, certification, evaluation, and professional learning across the state.

So, what changed?

And what does any of this actually mean for the people working in Florida schools?

Want to see the revised FEAPs for yourself?
You can view Florida’s official Rule 6A-5.065, The Florida Educator Accomplished Practices, including the newly incorporated FEAP Progression Plan, through the Florida Administrative Code. The revised rule is effective August 25, 2026 https://flrules.org/gateway/ruleNo.asp?id=6A-5.065

Here’s the Gist

• Florida’s FEAPs have been reorganized into six revised standards.

• A new Progression Plan provides additional guidance around the knowledge, skills, and competencies educators need to develop and demonstrate.

• The phrase “cognitive science of learning” is now explicitly included in the standards.

• The revised FEAPs affect much more than classroom teachers.

• Over the next several weeks, we’ll be looking at what these changes mean for six different roles across Florida education.

• Cognitive science has been part of Uncomplicate Ed’s professional learning for years, from school and district training to keynotes. If your team needs help understanding what this new FEAP language means for practice, this is already our wheelhouse.

Keep reading...

From the Old FEAPs to the New

The previous FEAPs focused on six areas. The revised FEAPs are also organized into six standards, but the organization and expectations have changed.

Some language is familiar, but the revised FEAPs do more than shuffle the order.

Standard 2 now brings professional learning, content knowledge, and pedagogy together. Standard 3 specifically calls for evidence-based instruction that helps students retain knowledge, think critically, and apply learning. Standard 5 names instructional pace, high-impact instructional practices, checks for understanding, and actionable feedback.

Those are details worth looking at more closely.

One Phrase That Caught Our Attention

If you know us, this will probably not surprise you.

The phrase “cognitive science of learning” appears twice in the revised FEAPs.

Standard 2 says educators should engage in relevant professional learning to continuously improve content knowledge and instruction grounded in the cognitive science of learning.

Standard 5 says educators should use high-impact instructional practices grounded in the principles of the cognitive science of learning.

That stood out to us immediately.

A Quick Note on the Language

Florida uses the phrase cognitive science of learning in the revised FEAPs.

You may be more familiar with cognitive science or the science of learning.

We were too.

Florida has chosen the phrase “cognitive science of learning,” so we’ll use that language when we’re referring directly to the FEAPs. As we dig into what it means for practice, though, we’ll also be careful about the terminology and the research underneath it.

Because if we’re going to put something into our expectations for effective teaching, we probably need a shared understanding of what we mean by it.

That is especially true here. Adding “cognitive science of learning” to the FEAPs does not automatically mean Florida educators know what falls under that umbrella or what it should look like in practice.

That part takes learning.

So What Might This Mean for Practice?

Cognitive science helps us understand how people think and learn.

That includes questions about attention, working memory, prior knowledge, memory, retrieval, forgetting, and cognitive load.

It helps us think about why students can appear to understand something today and struggle to retrieve it next week. Why too much information at once can overwhelm working memory. Why what students already know matters when they encounter something new. Why checking for understanding during instruction matters.

And ultimately, how the decisions we make during instruction can make learning more or less likely.

That makes another piece of the revised FEAPs especially interesting.

Standard 3 says educators should plan evidence-based instruction for students to retain knowledge, think critically, and apply learning.

Those three words, retain, think, and apply, are worth paying attention to.

The revised FEAPs begin to give us a clearer picture of what Florida expects effective instruction to accomplish.

The Progression Plan May Be the Bigger Story

Along with the revised standards, Florida has incorporated a new Florida Educator Accomplished Practices Progression Plan.

The plan provides additional guidance on the knowledge, skills, and competencies educators need to acquire and demonstrate as they advance within the standards.

One simple way we’re thinking about that progression is:

That progression matters.

A teacher can know that checking for understanding is important and still need support learning how to do it efficiently during instruction.

A teacher can know that lessons should align to grade-level standards and still need support unpacking those standards and planning toward the right level of rigor.

A teacher can understand that students forget and still need practical ways to build retrieval and review into instruction.

There is a space between knowing about a practice and being able to use it well.

That space is where professional learning matters.

Please Don’t Let This Become Another Checklist

This may be our biggest hope for the revised FEAPs.

Please don’t let them become six more things to check off.

We’ve all seen how this can go.

A new framework comes out. Someone makes a rubric. Someone else makes a walkthrough form. Before long, we’re walking into classrooms looking for evidence of a particular FEAP without spending enough time making sure everyone understands the practice underneath it.

Did the teacher check for understanding? Check.

Were clear rules and routines evident? Check.

Was the instructional pace appropriate? Check.

Did we see evidence of cognitive science?

Ummm...

Check?

That is where shared understanding matters.

If we do not define these things well, people will fill in the blanks themselves.

We can end up with teachers, coaches, administrators, and district leaders all using the same words while meaning very different things.

Instead of only asking, “Did we see it?” we also need to ask:

Do we have a shared understanding of what effective practice actually looks like?

Have we given educators the opportunity to learn how to do it?

Those questions lead to a much more useful conversation.

This Is Where Professional Learning Matters

A new set of expectations does not automatically create new knowledge or new practice.

If educators are expected to use high-impact instructional practices grounded in cognitive science, they need opportunities to learn what those practices are, why they work, and how to use them.

This is work we’ve been doing at Uncomplicate Ed for years. Cognitive science and the science of learning are woven throughout what we create, from our professional learning to our Reading Roadmaps, Math Roadmaps, and PD in a Box®. We use the same principles when we design learning for classroom teachers, instructional coaches, and school and district leaders. And we also offer dedicated cognitive science trainings and keynotes that help educators understand the research and, more importantly, what to do with it.

Good professional learning gives educators opportunities to understand the research, see practices modeled, try them, receive feedback, and figure out how they fit within their own grade level, content, and students.

That is how we begin moving from KNOW to DO to DEMONSTRATE.

And it is one reason we’re excited about the potential of the new Progression Plan. Used well, it can help us think beyond whether an educator has heard of something and toward whether they have actually had the opportunity to learn it, practice it, and use it effectively.

This Is Bigger Than the Classroom Teacher

Teachers are certainly at the center of the FEAPs, but they are not the only people who need to pay attention to the revision.

A principal needs to understand the practices well enough to recognize and support them.

An instructional coach needs a clear picture of effective practice while still maintaining a coaching relationship that is different from evaluation.

A mentor teacher needs to know how to help a developing educator move from understanding a practice to actually using it.

District professional learning leaders need to consider whether current professional learning gives educators the knowledge and practice they need to meet these expectations.

Superintendents and district leaders have to think about how professional learning, coaching, evaluation, curriculum, and instructional expectations work together.

Same FEAPs.

Different responsibilities.

Six Roles. Six Lenses.

That’s where we’re headed next.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll look at the revised FEAPs through each of these six lenses.

For each one, we’ll focus on the practical questions.

What do I need to know? What matters most for my role? What might I need to learn or do differently? How can the revised FEAPs support growth instead of becoming another compliance exercise?

And what does all of this actually look like in a Florida school?

Cognitive Science Is Already Our Wheelhouse

We were excited to see cognitive science named in the revised FEAPs because this is work we’ve been doing for years.

Our focus is helping educators understand the research well enough to use it. That means taking ideas like attention, working memory, retrieval, prior knowledge, cognitive load, forgetting, and explicit instruction and connecting them to the decisions educators make every day.

For a teacher, that may mean changing how a lesson is structured. For a coach, it may mean giving more precise feedback. For a principal or district leader, it may mean looking differently at professional learning, instructional expectations, or the support teachers receive.

The revised FEAPs give schools and districts a reason to look closely at this work now. If your team is trying to make sense of the phrase “cognitive science of learning,” identify the high-impact practices connected to it, or build a stronger shared understanding across roles, we can help.

Our cognitive science of learning experiences can be customized for schools and districts, and we also offer keynote options for larger groups.

Interested in bringing cognitive science professional learning to your school or district? Reach out to me (Andi) at [email protected] or by heading to uncomplicateed.com/contact-us

And We’re Just Getting Started

At Uncomplicate Ed, we spend a lot of time helping educators take big ideas and make them usable.

The revised FEAPs give Florida educators a new framework for talking about effective practice. Now comes the important part: making sure the people expected to use that framework actually understand it.

We’ll be digging into the Progression Plan, the individual standards, the role of cognitive science, and what all of this means depending on where you sit.

Because understanding the expectations is just the beginning.

The real work is figuring out how they live in practice.

In Case You Skimmed: TL;DR

Florida’s revised FEAPs take effect August 25, 2026. The six standards have been reorganized and updated, and a new Progression Plan provides guidance around the knowledge, skills, and competencies educators need to acquire and demonstrate.

The phrase “cognitive science of learning” now appears explicitly in Standards 2 and 5, which raises some important questions about what educators need to know and what research-informed instruction actually looks like in practice.

And this reaches beyond classroom teachers. Principals, coaches, mentor teachers, professional learning leaders, and district leaders all have a role in what happens next.

There’s more to come.

We’re just getting started.

Want to Keep Following Along?

Subscribe to Uncomplicate Ed, so you don’t miss the rest of our FEAP series. We’ll be unpacking each role, the Progression Plan, cognitive science, and what these changes can actually look like in Florida schools and classrooms.

Subscribe: go.uncomplicateed.com/widget/form/KN7u9iYOnlCeE5klDfV7

Interested in cognitive science professional learning or a keynote for your school or district? Connect with Andi: [email protected]