A top-ranked science and technology high school in Northern Viriginia is accused of trading its curriculum blueprints with the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for millions in charitable donations, according to an IRS complaint filed by a nonpartisan education watchdog.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia, has had a complaint filed against it by Defending Education, in which they alleged the school received $3.6 million for their Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund in exchange for providing its STEM curriculum to China.
From 2014 through 2021, at least 20 copy-cat schools, including Shirble HK, the Ameson Foundation, and Tsinghua University High School, transferred donations to the school's The Partnership Fund, which it then classified as charitable contributions in its reports to the IRS.
"The facts strongly suggest that the Fund operated as a pass-through to sell the intellectual property of Thomas Jefferson High School - America's premier public high school and a legally distinct entity - to organizations linked to the Chinese government, in exchange for capital improvement funding for the school," Defending Education stated in their formal complaint.
The watchdog claims the contributions made by China to Thomas Jefferson High School were far from charity and were instead payments for the school's highly coveted academic blueprints. The complaint maintains that a foreign adversary purchasing an elite American high school's scholastic blueprints is "completely unrelated" to any valid charitable purpose listed in the federal tax code, Defending Education stated in the complaint.
"We believe this evidently improper federal tax reporting is troubling enough to get the IRS' attention, and we're hoping to receive answers to these questions in due time," said Defending Education's vice president and legal fellow, Sarah Parshall Perry. "American taxpayers deserve to know what they're funding - especially when those funds could be used for partnerships in a nation overtly hostile to American interests."
If Defending Education is successful in their complaint and the contributions are no longer deemed tax deductible by the IRS, Thomas Jefferson High School could be hit with a tax bill of nearly $756,000 according to filings.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., the House Committee on Education and Workforce chair, told the Washington Free Beacon that the revelations are just one piece of larger problem with China's influence on American higher education, saying, "Defending Education's IRS complaint illustrates the extent to which the CCP has infiltrated America's classrooms."
James Morley III ✉
James Morley III is a writer with more than two decades of experience in entertainment, travel, technology, and science and nature.
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