Desert Sands Revives Bargain Basement DEIB Teacher College Service Agreement

Administrators at the Desert Sands Unified School District, located in the La Quinta/Indio/Palm Desert area of Southern California, have resubmitted a service agreement with a DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging) teacher college for approval by the board at the April 15^th meeting on Tuesday.

The service agreement with Alder Graduate School of Education (Alder GSE) was removed from the district’s agenda last month due to lack of transparency as all the exhibits, including Alder’s program description and acceptance criteria, were missing from the agenda. 

Apparently, the DSUSD board was not concerned about the warnings they received from the community regarding the DEI heavy Alder GSE, have reviewed all the exhibits, read the previous article that was sent to them, and consider the service agreement worth losing all federal funding. 

The background of Alder GSE, including direct links to Reed Hastings (founder of Netflix) and the heavy, now illegal, DEIB indoctrination, is discussed in detail in the article I just mentioned, but in short, Alder GSE is a Non-Profit founded by Reed Hastings (Netflix) to supply teachers to his charter schools, another Non-Profit based in Oakland, Ca. Alder GSE teacher training programs have now proliferated to other areas of California.  

Alder GSE currently has service agreements with:

LA: Gabriella Charter Schools, Lynwood Unified, and Pasadena Unified.

Bay: Oakland Unified, Pittsburgh Unified, San Lorenzo Unified, San Rafael City Schools, San Mateo County Office of Education, and Vallejo City Unified.

SoCal: Hemet Unified, Rialto Unified, Helendale Unified, Palm Springs Unified, San Jacinto Unified, Silver Valley Unified, and Victor Elementary.

Central Valley/Coast: Monterey County Office of Education, Lindsay Unified, Monterey Peninsula Unified, and San Juan Unified.

Although all of the Alder GSE service agreement exhibits are included in the DSUSD’s current agenda, the actual coursework that the student teachers must complete is not. Luckily, Alder GSE used the exact service agreement and exact exhibits in 2020, in an agreement (Agenda Item N.41) with Hemet Unified School District which does include the coursework. 

Since the course titles in Hemet’s 2020 Alder GSE service agreement are exactly the same as those in the DSUSD service agreement, it is logical that the courses have also held steady. That being said, there is one difference—in 2020, student-teachers took a full academic year, bookended by two summers; in 2025, the program was reorganized a bit, and student-teachers now only need to sacrifice one summer.

The Hemet USD service agreement attachment provides links to google documents which reveals the detailed study that Alder GSE requires of its “Residents,” as they call their student-teachers. Residents must complete a minimum of 34 college units over the course of a year and earn a teaching credential and a Master of Education (MA) in Teaching. For six more units, residents can receive a Special Education credential and MA degree.

In contrast, the more traditional University of La Verne offers a similar MA in teaching with a credential, but it takes 45 units and 2 to 3.5 years to complete. Not that I would recommend that University for any level of education now. Woke city.

Alder GSE Acceptance

Exhibit E in the Alder GSE service agreement is Alder’s “Resident Application Criteria.”  To qualify for the program, applicants must have a bachelor’s degree, maintained a 3.0 GPA in their subject matter, and be “eligible to work in the United States.” In addition, applicants “must demonstrate the Alder GSE Competencies,” which include demonstratable commitments to DEI tenants, leading students and their families in activism, and acceptance of a “one for all, all for one” Marxist mantra.

                                          —Alder GSE service agreement Exhibit E.

Yikes. Take a look at the breakdown of Alder GSE courses, then we’ll take a deeper look into a few of them.

The first summer residents take:

1. Identity and Teaching—3 units
2. Resident Seminar—1 unit
3. SPED Foundations of Inclusive Education—3 units
4. Principles of Teaching Secondary –3 units
   1. Specialized courses for math, science, ELA, social science, and Spanish
   2. Or Elementary Literacy and Content Methods
5. Disciplinary Literacy in Secondary Classroom—1 unit

In the Fall, Residents take:

1. Residence Field Work—1 unit
2. Residency Seminar II—3 units
3. Secondary Planning, Assessment, and Instructional Strategies I—3 units
   1. OR Elementary Literacy and Content Methods II
4. Child and Adolescent Development and Learning Theory

In the Spring, Residents would take:

1. Residence Field Work II—1 unit
2. Resident Seminar III—2 units
3. Secondary Planning, Assessment, and Instructional Strategies II—3 units
   1. OR Multiple Subject STREAM content methods
4. Action Research—2 units

The following courses were listed as a second summer term in Hemet USD’s 2020 Service Agreement but not in the current DSUSD agreement.

1. Resident Fieldwork III—1 unit
2. Scholarship, Synthesis, and Setting the Foundation—2 units
3. Secondary Principles of Teaching II—3 units
   1. OR Elementary Literacy and Content Methods III

Troubling Coursework and Federal Law Violations

It should be noted that every single course asks Residents for preferred pronouns.

Violations of numerous Executive Orders and U.S. Department of Education guidelines can be found in Alder GSE’s Program and Student Learning Objectives. In what seems to be a perversion of the 4-H pledge (Head, Heart, Hands, Health), Alder has three main learning objectives-Head, Heart, and Hands. 

The Heart objectives, which are expected outcomes in just about every course, seem to have more to do with intruding on families and activism than teaching. From the program:

1. Residents will demonstrate informed identities and approach their craft with concerns for social-justice issues dedicated to achieving equity for all students issues dedicated to achieving equity for all students
2. Residents will investigate, articulate, and challenge the multiple issues facing students and families in their communities, and will be able to connect meaningfully with students’ families to enlist them as partners in their children’s education. Through this work residents will identify and articulate barriers, provide access, and continually improve their use of strategies to support their students.
3. Residents will investigate, articulate, and challenge current patterns in public education. Through this work residents continuously identify practices that interrupt and perpetuate inequities system-wide and in their setting. 
4. Residents will be able to locate and articulate potential perceptual biases implicit in their own sociocultural and economic backgrounds and experiences

Ed 200 Identity and Teaching

The first course Residents take is ED 200: Identity and Teaching.  The course description posits that: 

“Ours is an educational system that at its best is the engine of equalization, the great driver of social justice. Public schools are also a stark reminder of inequitable distribution of resources. From hyper segregated schools to resource distribution that shocks the conscience, we also see in public schools the most difficult face of American society.”

The course covers identity, bias, positionality, and all levels of government in Education. Residents are trained to “enlist families,” identify equity barriers, “challenge current patterns in Education,” and “locate implicit bias.”  Residents are also trained in teaching the Whole Child and in the importance of Culturally Responsive Teaching.

Residents are also taught that in the current educational landscape there are achievement gaps, wealth gaps, college attendance gaps, and “hyper-segregated schools.”

Resident Seminar I

In the first Seminar, which focuses on Equity, Residents are taught Community Mapping.

The goals of Community Mapping seem more fit for Maoist Red Guard informant training however, as teachers are to learn everything about the families of students and the community to become “community resources because they know more about the lives of students and the assets of the community.”  

Child and Adolescent Development and Learning Theory

Alder GSE’s Child and Adolescent Development and Learning Theory course is particularly disturbing, as the “Heart” and the illegal DEIB objectives come clearly into focus. The course focuses on DEI content such as Social Emotional Learning, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), MTSS, Social Justice, and of course, gender/sexual identity. 

From the course description, emphasis added:

“Topics will include: schools as contexts for development; cognitive development; learning theories; motivation; language development, social-emotional development, moral development, peers and friendships; identity development, ethnoracial identity, gender identity, sexual identity; family, culture and social class; inclusive and responsive pedagogical approaches; and developing positive and supportive relationships with students.”

The course requires the Resident to choose one “focal student” and complete eight modules that are centered on observations and interviews with that student—even outside of school settings.

The course document links to an assignment page which provides details about the modules in the course about the focal student.

The assignment page is jaw-dropping. Some things just must be seen to be believed, so I am compelled to switch over to a series of screen shots from the assignment page. 

The Assignment overview:

  –Alder GSE Case study overview 

The assignment document also provides suggested questions and guidance for when interviewing and shadowing the focal student.

For Social Emotional Learning:

  –Alder GSE SEL questions

For Gender and Sexual Identity:

–Alder GSE gender identity questions for students

For the parents and students during the home visit:

Again, what is with the focus of getting into the home? Are these teachers or government agents/spies? Secondary teachers have five or more classes of 40 or more students. Establishing, and keeping open, lines of communication with parents/guardians (NOT “families”) is important, but in no way is it practical, or even appropriate, for a high school teacher to be making home-visits to gather data on how a student and their families live.

According to USASpending.gov, Alder GSE has received a total of $4.5 million in government funding, from 117 transactions since 2018. Hopefully, President Trump’s Department of Education and DOGE have already spotted Alder GSE and turned off the spigot.

But why live in a world of hope, when we have a tool to ensure the right people can put an eye on Alder GSE? https://enddei.ed.gov/ And, it is so easy to use! 

Also important, President Trump’s Executive Orders specifically banned school districts from using third party vendors to instill DEI and gender ideologies on our nation’s students (and teachers). Thus, every aforementioned school district that have Service Agreements with Alder GSE are at risk of losing all federal funding… if they are reported.  Is your local district on the list?