Thomas Jefferson High School took donations from Chinese entities. Then administrators handed over the blueprint to its success.
Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School has been so successful as America’s leading science, technology, engineering, and mathematics school that the Chinese Communist Party is working diligently to clone it, with the help of the school’s leadership.
CCP-linked entities have in recent years leveraged millions in donations to secure the school’s strategically vital intellectual property, according to internal documents obtained by the watchdog group Parents Defending Education (PDE) and shared with National Review.
After collecting generous donations through an affiliated nonprofit, TJ administrators handed the blueprint to America’s top-ranked STEM school — including its curriculum, syllabi, and floor plans — to America’s chief rival. Across China, there are now tens of state-sponsored Thomas Jefferson High School replicas, dubbed the Thomas Schools.
Chinese entities have donated $3.6 million to TJ through the Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund, a nonprofit organization the school set up in 1999 to aid with fundraising efforts.
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.
PDE claims that what the school calls “donations” were in fact payment for TJ’s intellectual property and further accuses the school of running afoul of the IRS by funneling the money through a nonprofit that, while outwardly independent from the school, acted as a broker, selling the school’s IP for Chinese cash.
“FCPS employees and staff bent over backwards to provide foreign donors unprecedented access to the inner workings of what was once the country’s premier secondary school — a courtesy that, strangely, has not been extended to either parents or the taxpayers who underwrote such innovation,” PDE president Nicole Neily said. “TJ’s formula for success was handed over to CCP-linked officials for a few million dollars in donations and a handful of junkets for staff — a bargain-basement price and one that should have triggered alarm bells at the district, state, and federal levels.”
Asked for a response to PDE’s claims, a Fairfax County Public Schools emphasized that “the TJ Fund is a separate and independent 501(c)(3) entity, which is not overseen by FCPS.” The spokesperson acknowledged that FCPS had a “formal relationship” with the Ameson Foundation until 2018 but said it has since been discontinued.
“FCPS has taken steps to ensure that the Fund will not accept or solicit donations from any foreign entity without the express consent of the division superintendent,” the spokesperson said.
Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund
TJPF is a nonprofit established in 1999 to “raise funds from current and past parents, alumni, corporations and foundations.” Evan Glazer took over as principal of TJ in 2006 and began planning for a lengthy and expensive renovation to take place in 2013 — a renovation that would ultimately require more than $8 million to complete. It was during this time that TJPF struck up partnerships with the Ameson Foundation and Tsinghua University — two institutions with deep ties to the CCP — ostensibly to help fund TJ’s renovation project. The nonprofit Ameson Education and Cultural Exchange Foundation’s founder Sean Zhang is tied to the CCP’s United Front Work Department, as was investment holding company Shirble’s recently deceased chairman, Yang Xiangbo. “I wanted to alert you this week 4/17 and 4/18 the Thomas Jefferson Partnership Fund (TJPF) signed agreements with Ameson Foundation and Tsinghua University to provide professional development and support in their efforts to build STEM programs,” Glazer wrote in an email in 2014 obtained by National Review. A review of fundraising campaign pamphlets from the time shows TJ officials lauding their relationships with the Chinese, whom TJPF listed as donors.
Despite being “separate and individual” organizations, as Superintendent Michelle Reid described the school and nonprofit in an August 2023 letter, internal communications and documents reveal that TJPF employees had access to a host of taxpayer-funded tools: including operational services, HR resources, official “fcps.edu” email addresses, a business phone linked to the school district, office space on TJ’s campus, and office resources. TJPF also utilized free labor from FCPS teachers and administrators who spent time hosting Chinese officials on school visits.
For example, in an email from August 2018, a Partnership Fund employee asked a TJ employee for help onboarding a TJPF staffer. TJPF also asked TJ to fingerprint, conduct background checks on, and create badges for TJPF staff — routine procedures for FCPS employees.
TJPF also officially watermarked for authenticity documents from TJ, to distribute to Chinese partners, according to public records.
’How to Clone’ Thomas Jefferson High School
Foreign “donations” came with a few requests: that TJPF hand over blueprints, floor plans, curricula, lab photographs, and thumb drives with Senior Student Research projects, all intellectual property of TJ. TJPF hosted delegations from China “via [their] partnership[s],” a 2017 email between administrators said. During such visits, TJ staff were asked to speak with, host, and present to Chinese officials.
National Review obtained an agenda of one of those visits, held in February, 2017. Tsinghua University High School delegates visited with TJPF staff, received a “tour of TJHSST Campus,” an “overview of TJ organization, operation and management, admin framework, division leadership, etc,” an “overview of teacher evaluation,” and an “overview of TJ admissions” on one day. In subsequent days, Chinese officials toured research labs, sat in on engineering classes, observed Web-design and astronomy-research labs, and spoke with TJ’s chemistry-lab director.
Shortly before it appears that TJPF’s agreements with Ameson and Tsinghua were set to expire, Chinese officials began to demand more information from TJ. In October of 2017, just before a meeting with a “group of delegates [that] is essential to moving along the permit approval process for the schools that they are building in China,” one administrator emailed Glazer’s successor, Ann Bonitatibus, to say that the CCP’s requests had become “more frequent.”
Chinese officials ramped up requests in 2017–18. Delegations began “looking to learn more about our construction and administration,” one administrative email said, and sought “extensive advice on how to manage a school like TJ.” Ameson requested a list of equipment used in labs, curriculum design, and examples of senior projects. In January 2018, TJ’s director of student services even said in an email that Chinese officials wanted a “How to Clone TJHSST Handbook.”
Senior research projects are a TJ student’s crowning achievement. Like a senior thesis, the projects involve heavy research and extensive time commitments from students. Sometimes, the projects are done in conjunction with defense contractors or “mentors” in the DMV area. Under the mentorship program, students can work in the labs of various research institutes. TJ says on its website that students have partnered with George Washington University, the National Institutes of Health, and K2M. Chinese officials requested, and gained access to, examples of past student research projects, without student consent. In 2017, one administrator asked TJ to “put [senior research projects] on a thumb drive,” as “Dropbox is not accessible in China.”
When asked what the nature of the Chinese visits were, former principal Glazer told National Review that “hundreds of schools visit TJ to learn about its distinction. Many of them are from all around the world. The school would not discriminate the permission to visit based on race or national origin.”
“When educators meet with one another in a professional environment, they discuss approaches to teaching and learning that help students learn,” Glazer said. “It’s often a mutual exchange of ideas. Materials shared are typically publicly available, most often on our website or shared at events and conferences.”
Glazer did not explain by what authority TJPF, operating as an independent nonprofit, handed over the intellectual property of a legally distinct public high school. In 2014, a TJPF employee acknowledged in an email that “the agreement [with Tsinghua University] did not promise or guarantee anything (with much input from lawyers) but instead indicated that TJPF would try, to the best of its abilities to facilitate a cooperative relationship between Tsinghua and TJ that would be mutually beneficial to both groups . . . they’d like to learn, if possible, from our faculty, educators, and administrators.”
If the gifts given to TJPF by Chinese organizations were not “charitable contributions” to the tax-exempt 501(c)(3), as the fund says they were, the $3.6 million could be subject to taxes. PDE believes that TJPF was able to secure the funds by promising Chinese entities all-access passes to TJ’s campus. When asked why TJPF received donations from CCP-linked entities in 2023, an FCPS spokesperson said that “it is not unusual for elite public schools, colleges, and universities in the U.S. to benefit from donations and grants from various sources, including international sources. The TJ Partnership Fund is an independent non-profit entity.”
In a 2018 email, TJ’s assistant principal said that “PF has a contract with Ameson that they will pay $1M in exchange for help in getting their schools up and running in China. Called the Thomas Schools.”
More emails suggest that TJPF entered business contracts with foreign entities. “Per our contract with Tsinghua University High School, we are required to send two educators to them for a week,” one TJPF employee emailed another on April 22, 2017. “This is the last year of our current contract with [Tsinghua],” another email said on February 2, 2018.
Thomas Schools
China’s Thomas Schools are “poised to become a global brand, a national first-class high school, and an internationally renowned educational institution,” the organization says on its website. They are modeled after the “curriculum, pedagogy, and philosophy of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia, United States,” according to an international teachers’ job bank. At least 20 Thomas schools exist across China, PDE’s Michele Exner wrote in an op-ed in June.
“More than $18 million from China’s government has made its way into America’s schools over the past decade. This isn’t just funding for language and cultural classes. It is essentially a pay-to-play scheme that is opening the doors of our classrooms to the adversaries of the U.S., giving them access to our students and intellectual property,” Exner wrote.
The Thomas Schools aren’t the only example of Chinese influence in American K–12 education. PDE revealed last year that Confucius Institutes and Classrooms, run in partnership with the Chinese government, are present in 34 states and the District of Columbia, including in 20 schools near military bases. The U.S. Department of State in 2020 designated the programs a “foreign mission” of the CCP and said that they operate as “the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas propaganda and influence operation.”