Academic Freedom

I recently read an article that reminded me a lot of a topic that we discussed in the beginning of the year relating to Civil Liberties. In this discussion, we debated if reciting "The Pledge of Allegiance" (that mentions God) was obstructing the American ideal of Separation of Church and State. The article that I read talked about how four states are considering new legislation about teaching the theory of evolution in science classes and also bringing up God in the creation story. What initially struck me was that, according to the article, "the proposed laws were framed around the concept of "academic freedom". The phrase "academic freedom" seems so vague. Is this insinuating that in order to have "academic freedom" some religious explanation is required?

The main root of this argument is that teachers are struggling to find enough scientific evidence of Evolution and Creation so in an attempt to clarify these concepts with the students, they will teach from a religious perspective. This is  understandable reasoning but many critics think that this would be going outside of the boundaries of the basic public school institutions that can only exist if there is no clash between Church and State. Many critics also fear that this legislation could lead to a rise in the Creationist form of teaching in schools. In case you do not know the term, Creationism is the religious belief that the world was created by a supernatural being. The Public Education System has had a difficult time drawing the line between religious beliefs and scientific evidence when dealing with controversial topics such as Evolution or Creation. The Public Education System would like to keep it's purely science based curriculum but it is a challenge to remain purely base on evidence when teachers feel like their students are not grasping these certain concepts and have a lot of unanswerable questions. Do you think that these laws, if passed, could impact the future of the Public Education System?