Lox, I don't think that any public schools in the US are "teaching creationism alongside evolution as an alternative 'theory'". There were a couple of school boards (in Kansas and Texas, I think) in which fundamentalists temporarily captured the majority and tried such a thing, but they were stopped in the courts and turned out in the next election.   Of course, what is taught in private schools and to children who are home-schooled is something else entirely.