Reports indicate that a leading science and technology high school in Northern Virginia is under scrutiny for allegedly trading its curriculum blueprints with the Chinese Communist Party in return for sizable charitable donations. This information comes from an IRS complaint submitted by Defending Education, a non-partisan education watchdog.
The complaint was lodged against Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax, Virginia. It alleges that the school received $3.6 million for its Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund in return for providing its STEM curriculum to China.
From 2014 through 2021, at least 20 similar schools, including Shirble HK, the Ameson Foundation, and Tsinghua University High School, have reportedly transferred donations to the school’s Partnership Fund. These donations were subsequently classified as charitable contributions in their reports to the IRS.
Defending Education, in their formal complaint, suggests 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.”
The watchdog group asserts that the contributions made by China to Thomas Jefferson High School were far from charity and were instead payments for the school’s highly sought-after 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.
Sarah Parshall Perry, Defending Education’s vice president and legal fellow, stated, “We believe this improper federal tax reporting is troubling enough to get the IRS’s attention, and we’re hoping to receive answers to these questions in due time.” Perry emphasized that American taxpayers deserve to know what they’re funding, particularly when those funds could potentially be used for partnerships in a nation openly hostile to American interests.
This development follows earlier reports that if Defending Education’s complaint is successful and the IRS no longer deems the contributions tax-deductible, Thomas Jefferson High School could face a tax bill of nearly $756,000.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich.., the House Committee on Education and Workforce chair, told the Washington Free Beacon that these revelations are just one part of a larger problem with China’s influence on American higher education. To quote, “Defending Education’s IRS complaint illustrates the extent to which the CCP has infiltrated America’s classrooms.”
This raises important questions about the interplay of education, international relations, and tax law. The public’s right to information is paramount, and as more details emerge, we will continue to report on this developing story.
