Why education in so much of the south is a joke.

Standardized tests are what's wrong with the PUBLIC schools (among other things)

The solution you propose is worse than the problem you seek to solve.

for starters, it clarifies the misconception put forward in the OP.

Secondly, while you might not like the outcome (I'm not crazy about it) there's always going to be a running debate over the place where liberty stops and government intervention "for your own good" begins.

The brutal reality is that notevery student is going to end up some place where knowing the truth of evolution matters. I've made this point a dozen times but I'll repeat it: these mis-educated kids might never be doctors or biologists but they could easily be anything from architects to truck drivers without a solid understanding of evolution, and 10,000 jobs in between from the menial to the respected.

There is, in fact, a difference between well read and prepared to succeed in life. We might think it's a good thing that all kids be taught evolution (and trig, and chemistry, and Shakespere, and yada yada yada) but there are plenty of opportunities for those who aren't.

And that's before you note the abundant opportunity for young people to acquire the information in non-formal settings (there's a lot I know now i didn't get taught in public school and i expect everyone could say that, even when they are 19 years old).

It's also true that as a class, homeschool students (which come from overwhelmingly religiously motivated homes, though not all are) preform better on things like college entrance exams than do their public school peers (as a group) even though I'll wager that the vast majority of them were taught some variation of "God did it" in regards to biology.

It may be possible to get by without such knowledge but it remains the case that you are depriving them of it in itself (since education isn't just about gaining employment) and that you're limiting the scope of their future prospects.