Chinese immersion programs operate in 32 U.S. states, about 396 to 407 schools

Taxpayer-funded Chinese and Mandarin immersion programs in U.S. public and charter schools operate using local, state, or federal education dollars, while facing intense political debate regarding foreign influence.

Students spend half their day learning core subjects in Mandarin (co-taught) and the other half in English, starting in kindergarten.

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If students are learning Chinese in public schools, they could be using a curriculum shaped by the Chinese Communist Party. 

In 2004, Beijing began to establish Confucius Institutes on American university campuses, which in turn partnered with K-12 public schools to establish roughly 500 Confucius Classrooms. A backlash on Capitol Hill led to the closure of nearly all the Confucius Institutes, leading most to assume that the problem had been solved.

But as the National Association of Scholars documented in a 2022 report, some of the institutes survived by changing their names or transferring their operations to third-party organizations with innocuous names. This is preserving Beijing’s influence over American students.

One successor group is the Center for Bridging Cultures, a K-12 education nonprofit based in Virginia, just outside the nation’s capital. The center helps bring teachers from China into American classrooms, organizes student and administrator exchange trips to China, and continues to operate as Alfred University’s Confucius Institute’s Confucius Classroom partner with the same Chinese government and university partnerships, according to K-12 public school documents.

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https://thehill.com/opinion/education/5866193-china-backed-education-nonprofits/

Bipartisan Call to Ramp Up Chinese in US Schools:
https://languagemagazine.com/2025/12/22/bipartisan-call-to-ramp-up-chinese-in-us-schools/

A Quick Guide to Chinese Immersion Schools in the US:
https://www.thechairmansbao.com/blog/chinese-immersion-schools-us/