Empowering Students Through Effective Performance Feedback: The FACTS Framework

Providing direct actionable feedback to students is one of the most powerful and effective means of improving student performance (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), supported by research literature extending over more than 40 years (Kluger & DeNisi, 1996; Wilkinson, 1981; Wisniewski et al., 2020). Performance feedback is recognized by the Council for Exceptional Children and CEEDAR Center as a high leverage practice (HLP; McLeskey et al., 2017) that can impact behavior and academic performance. Unfortunately, despite such strong evidence, it can be difficult to operationalize feedback in classrooms. This article describes the FACTS framework to help teachers and other education professionals operationalize the principles of effective feedback in ways that both honor and extend the impact of HLPs in inclusive classrooms (McLeskey et al., 2022). FACTS stands for frequent, affirmative and corrective, copious, timely, and specific. Each component of the FACTS framework describes a critical step and/or condition of effective feedback along with classroom-based examples. Specific consideration and recommendations are also included to support students with disabilities