Okeechobee County School Board Advances Curriculum Standards Alignment to Improve Outcomes

Case Study
Okeechobee County School Board

Learn how this Florida K-12 district partnered with Hanover Research to increase cohesive teaching and learning through curriculum mapping and alignment.

Ninety miles south of Orlando, Florida, the Okeechobee County School Board serves over 6,000 students across ten schools. Like many K-12 districts, Okeechobee is focused on delivering high-quality education while managing shifting standards and workforce readiness needs.

During a period of significant curriculum transition, the district recognized a vital need to strengthen its instructional coherence. Okeechobee serves as a powerful example of a district that took a proactive, strategic approach to address these gaps.

The Challenge: Address Inconsistent Curriculum and Instructional Practices

Okeechobee faced several distinct hurdles that threatened its instructional consistency and cohesive learning. Student achievement in math and English language arts (ELA) trailed behind the state average by 7–9 percentage points, and the district faced a C-rating within Florida’s accountability system.

While the district boasted strong localized programs, particularly in career and technical education (CTE), an internal program audit revealed substantial instructional inconsistencies between individual schools, including:

Misaligned Curriculum: Existing curriculum maps no longer reflected current Florida educational standards or newly adopted instructional materials.
Site-Level Inconsistency: Significant autonomy at individual school sites led to varied instructional practices, preventing a cohesive learning experience for students transitioning between grades or schools.
Limited Instructional Expertise: The district employed a high proportion of alternatively certified teachers. While dedicated, many of these educators lacked the deep, foundational expertise required to independently map curriculum to rigorous state standards.
Concurrent Adoptions: The district was simultaneously navigating new, complex curricula adoptions in science and ELA.

As district leaders began their curriculum implementation work, they understood that without clearer curriculum maps and supports, instructional practices would continue to be fragmented across schools, and students’ ability to reach grade-level in core subjects would remain hampered.

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The Solution: A Collaborative, Unified Approach to K-12 Curricular Improvements

Okeechobee’s leadership partnered with Hanover to implement a unified solution to its curriculum and instructional challenges.

After evaluating the district’s needs, the Hanover team designed a phased advisory project that combined research with tailored consultations and in-person professional learning workshops to help both novice and veteran teachers sustain the work for the long term.

Hanover’s unique capacity-building approach included:

Structured workshops: The Hanover team facilitated intensive onsite workshops for educators to unpack standards, clarify learning goals and metrics, and map national and state standards to curricular and instructional strategies. With a high satisfaction rating, 96% of the workshop participants said they planned to continue using the skills and concepts they learned.
Ongoing consultations: Quarterly check-ins and feedback cycles from Hanover ensured sustained support for mapping and instructional integration across the duration of the project.
Robust tools and frameworks: Hanover equipped the district with specialized curriculum mapping templates and a comprehensive curriculum mapping rubric, which evaluated maps based on six key criteria: alignment with standards, vertical articulation, interdisciplinary coherence, pacing timelines, instructional materials, and overall usability.
The 5E instructional model: Hanover integrated research-based instructional models to help teachers align their lesson plans with broader district goals, ensuring accommodations for IEP and 504 students and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles were built in from the start.

“Thank you to Hanover for guiding a professional and useful discussion. You valued our expertise in our fields and gave us the autonomy to make decisions best for our grade levels based on standards.”
—Okeechobee teacher and workshop participant

The Outcome: Districtwide Instructional Coherence and Consistency

In 2026, Okeechobee’s strategic partnership with Hanover has already generated new operational and instructional improvements, including:

Improved curricula adoption: The district was able to enhance its curriculum rollout process, successfully aligning and adopting new science and ELA curricula concurrently.
Standardized curriculum maps: Using Hanover’s tools and expert guidance, the district implemented a standardized process for building high-quality curriculum maps and instructional practices. Teachers and staff actively participate in the district’s standards alignment and curriculum mapping efforts, developing shared understanding and capacity across schools while balancing site-level autonomy.
Teaching resources and support: The newly designed curriculum maps serve as a vital support system for the district’s educators, including alternatively certified teachers, who are now equipped with clear pacing, unpacked standards, and integrated formative assessments on day one.

The district has also seen a 7-percentage-point gain in its four-year graduation rate over the past two years (from 77% to 83.7%), which it hopes to continue increasing with stronger teaching and learning practices in place.

By engaging in strategic alignment work with Hanover, Okeechobee’s leadership found an efficient way to strengthen teaching and learning consistency across schools, laying the groundwork for every student to experience highly effective instruction.

“Working with Hanover Research has been integral in helping us get new curriculum off the ground in the right way. Our teachers are so pleased with having the curriculum mapping resource now and in having devoted time to collaborate on it.”
—Lauren Myers, Assistant Superintendent of Instructional Services