The media, with their usual facility for dumbing everything down to the simplest imaginable soundbites, universally claim that the Tennessee "monkey law" forbade the teaching of evolution. It really forbade telling kids that we came from animals, no more than that, and for just the reason you bring up.
Why are we always told that the law prohibited the teaching of evolution outright? 1) It promotes the perception that opposition to evolution is ignorant religious obscurantism, and 2) It conceals the real reason for evolution's appeal to those who are pushing it.
You make good points. I can guarantee you, however, that evolution teaches, or at a minimum implies in HS texts that all animals have a common ancestors, and that we DID “evolve” from lower life forms. Blessings, Bob