I have two kids about 2/3 the way through their school years, and my opinion is that science classes in my town focus too much on the details and not enough on the big picture.
One benefit of participation in the Creation/evolution debate is development of a good understanding of the operation of a cell, particularly cell division. When my children have studied this topic I've been surprised at the shear amount of detail they're forced to memorize. They're memoizing cell structures I didn't even know existed!
In this educational approach, a cell becomes an anonymous aglomeration of unrelated parts that hinder and hide its simple beauty. They go down checklists memorizing parts and functions, like "mitochondria == energy", "cell membrane == diffusion" and "nucleus == DNA". They can regurgitate all this information up until about a minute after the test, and then it's all forgotten. I see little understanding and comprehension of actual cell behavior in this approach.
I would like to see schools take a higher level and more abstract approach, and only after the basic high level principles and processes are understood to break it down into details.
--Percy