Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots organization “working to reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas,” released a report on Wednesday that provides evidence linking the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to sponsoring affiliated educational programs to a number of American K-12 schools.
The report, titled “Little Red Classrooms,” details how 143 school districts, including 20 near military bases, have or had partnerships with Confucius Institutes to provide “Confucius Classrooms,” which are “centers that teach Chinese language and culture.”
The PDE research uncovered evidence of numerous schools receiving a combined total of nearly $18 million in financial aid from Chinese government-affiliated entities over the course of a decade. One example that the report shared was on Sisters School District in Oregon, which has an active contract with the Confucius Institute at Portland University. The report stated, “The district’s high school World Languages page noted that its Chinese program featured ‘three native speaker Chinese teachers sponsored by Hanban, a part of the China Ministry of Education.’”
Another example shared in the report was how the Highland Park Independent School District in Texas received a $20,000 grant for the “operation and supplies of the Chinese courses,” from the Confucius Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2020. Those funds reportedly “were also to be used by a district staff member to ‘travel to China for educational purposes.’”
The Little Red Classrooms report stated:
The Chinese government’s effort to forge ties with American schools through its Ministry of Education is one facet of the Chinese Communist Party’s broader soft-power strategy to influence policy in nations throughout the world. Expanding Confucius Classrooms in the United States has been a top priority for the Chinese government, the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found.
The State Department designated Confucius Institutes a “foreign mission” of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020. As noted in the State Department’s report, these programs are funded in part by the Chinese government under guidance from the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, “the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas propaganda and influence operation.”
PDE president Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital, “The alarming evidence uncovered by our investigation should concern parents, educators, and policymakers alike. Families deserve to know who is influencing the American education system so that they can make informed choices about what their children are learning behind closed doors.”
“The Trump administration took steps to rein in Confucius Institutes at colleges and universities. It is frightening, however, that no such transparency mandate exists at the K-12 level,” Neily continued. “Accordingly, it is imperative that elected officials at both the federal and state levels take immediate action to gauge the extent of these programs in order to ensure that American schoolchildren receive a high-quality education free from undue foreign interference.”
Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.) reacted to the report by requesting that the Department of Education investigate the CCP’s use of the Confucius Institutes influence on K-12 education in the United States.
The Washington Examiner reported that Banks sent a letter on Wednesday to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona citing the PDE report, declaring that “the flow of money from the Chinese government into the nation’s education infrastructure has ‘no place in our country.’”
The Examiner continued:
“For decades, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has worked to exert influence over America’s education system, an effort that Xi Jinping has dramatically amplified,” Banks wrote. “By instituting CIs, Confucius Classrooms, and similar partnerships — which American school districts often mistake as benign affiliations and grants — Beijing has been able to establish ties with U.S. schools all across the country.”
Banks told the Examiner, “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we were able to expose nefarious CCP influence over our universities…. We must act with the same urgency to ensure our K-12 schools are not being funded by America’s greatest foreign adversary.”
The in-depth report recommended that “state and federal officials should immediately begin investigations to determine the scope of China’s involvement, influence, and access to our K-12 student information and curriculum.”
PDE also recommended that at the “Congressional level, committees of jurisdiction should move to hold hearings to determine the scope of this security vulnerability, and specifically to evaluate how China’s infiltration of our K-12 classrooms has compromised student information, curriculum data, and America’s intellectual property.”
The DOE has not publicly responded to the report’s release or to Congressman Banks’ request.
