Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, located in Alexandria, is a state-chartered magnet school known for drawing bright minds to its classes in grades 9-12.
The group Defending Education, which exposed the high school’s affiliation with three Chinese entities last fall, is now asking the IRS to step in to investigate a related nonprofit, Partnership Fund, that oversaw more than $3 million in cash payments.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education, says the allegation is Thomas Jefferson High benefited from payments from China that came through the Partnership Fund.
“Except they were not actually held by the nonprofit fund itself,” she tells AFN, “but rather passed through to Thomas Jefferson High School in exchange for S.T.E.M. curriculum and literal blueprints on how to create a clone of Thomas Jefferson High School, with all of its technology and intellectual property, in China itself."
Defending Education’s allegations were first published at National Review, in an October 10, 2024 article. That article describes how China obtained Thomas Jefferson High’s curriculum, syllabi, and even its floor plans, after $3.6 million in donations flowed to the nonprofit.
National Review reported last fall:
Tsinghua University High School donated $1.2 million from 2014 to 2018, the Ameson Foundation donated $900,000 from 2014 to 2018, and Shirble HK donated $1.5 million from 2016 to 2021, according to IRS forms reviewed by National Review.
Perry says the IRS needs to get involved because Defending Education believes those donations were, in reality, payments for services. If true, that would violate IRS reporting requirements for nonprofits.
Thomas Jefferson High’s close cooperation with China is also a national security issue, Perry warns.
“It's actually representative of a more troubling trend,” she says, “and that is the growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party in American education.”
Perry was interviewed by AFN just days before Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the State Department will “aggressively” revoke the student visas of Chinese students studying in the U.S.
The Chinese Communist Party is known for sending Chinese nationals to study on U.S. college campuses with a second role: To obtain intelligence that is sent back home.
