There are good people, and good Christians, in the public education system. And there are schools under the banner of "Christian" that reflect a sectarian perspective. But the idea that Christian schools are full of kids who are just getting VBS all day long and that the primary criteria in the curriculum is creationism rather than evolution is completely off base and false. The school organization with which our school is affiliated is ACSI, the largest such organization in the country with 24,000 member schools, and schools affiliated with ACSI cannot be, by the guidelines of their affiliation, "segregationist," they must have a fully developed and well rounded curriculum that meets or exceeds the standards of the public school system in their state, and they must adhere to a distinctively Christian educational philosophy. The kinds of Christian schools you guys are describing are few and far between.
The philosophical differences between Christian education and the public school system in America are vast and clearly distinguished. American public education is both secular and humanist in its basic educational philosophy, and that, by its very definition, denies the existence of a supreme being, much less a God who provided humans with a savior. The curriculum objectives are designed around that premise. The early influences on what is today's public educational philosophy were John Dewey and Horace Mann, not completely or openly atheist, but certainly heavily influenced by an atheist perspective. Since 2005, a result of the Bush Administration's "No Child Left Behind" initiative, the US Department of Education has pushed a set of educational standards known as "Common Core." This comes from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, a group that is dedicated to neutralizing and eliminating what they consider negative cultural influences, and which pushes for one-world government. In spite of claims to the contrary, an end-run is being made around local school board control of curriculum. Common Core standards are enforced by "the test," the state based objective exams that students are required to pass in order to graduate from high school in most states.
I'm realizing that this discussion probably needs to be moved to another thread, so that it doesn't complicate the SBC Bashing that will happen here.