We did as well, although it seemed to be kind of slipped in rather than purposely designed into the curriculum. What the school was judged on formally was mostly how well kids did at the standardized exams, both the state exams for regular classes, and the AP exams for advanced classes. Preparing to do well on those didn't really involve doing any science.
The main factor that I think led to some science happening anyway was that a "good" middle-class suburban school felt it had to own some fancy technology to come across as modern and well equipped. So we had computer labs decked out with Macs, and pretty decent chemistry equipment. But once you spent some money on some fancy stuff, you need to put it into the school day somehow.
The computers were mainly used as quasi-free-time, where you had some self-directed time to play on the Macs, as long as you were doing it in one of the "edutainment" applications. Some of those were designed by educators with a constructivist approach to free-form, experimentation-based education, which produces a kind of virtual-science environment (other applications, of course, were badly designed and not useful for learning anything). And then the chemistry lab had to be used for something too; that one was a bit more directed, generally going through some standard experiments.
I found both parts to be pretty disconnected from what we were tested on, which was maybe precisely why they were interesting and educational...
