There are plenty of reasons why the school may have failed the science exam without the kids being taught something other than science. They simply may have been taught poorly.
While I attended Big Spring Junior High School, I had three different teachers deny some aspect of science.
My seventh grade history teacher stated that she "[thought] the date for crossing the Bering Strait [in our history book] was too long ago."
My seventh grade science teacher, after being badgered by a few members of the class said that she did not believe in evolution.
In both of these cases, neither are too horrible and are merely stating their views as an opinion. Both are somewhat excusable.
However, it was my eighth grade science teacher who did something of particular offense.
She was reading a TAKS (state standardized test) review question that began "Scientists who believe in the Big Bang Theory...". She inserted "...are insane." without any provocation.
Whereas my seventh grade teachers merely stated disbelief, my eighth grade teacher practically attacked a scientific theory. Mind you. all of the courses in question were advanced (G/T) classes.
Even though I was taking honors classes, evolution was only mentioned once as a couple paragraphs in 9th grade biology.
If you take all of this with the fact that Big Spring has some 33 Baptist churches in a town of 20,000 people (excluding the 5,000 in prison or nursing homes), it's not surprising that the children would do poorly in science.
If someone is bombarded with assertions that evolution is false from both church and school, how do you expect them to take evolution or the rest of science seriously?
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