In some embodiments, an apparatus includes an optical transceiver which includes a rate-adaptive forward error correction (FEC) encoder and a rate-adaptive FEC decoder. The rate-adaptive FEC encoder is configured to adjust a number of a set of known symbols associated with a codeword to achieve rate adaption. A length of the codeword is fixed. The rate-adaptive FEC encoder is configured to generate the codeword based on (1) a set of information symbols including the set of known symbols and a set of data symbols, and (2) a fixed number of a set of parity symbols generated using information symbols. The rate-adaptive FEC decoder is configured to receive a set of reliability values associated with a channel word, and expand the set of reliability values to produce an expanded set of reliability values. The rate-adaptive FEC decoder is further configured to decode the expanded set of reliability values.