Recapitulation- Embryology and Evolution

Hello all, I was just wondering if anyone was educated on recapitulation(an embryo's development resembling the stages of evolution its ancestors went through). Recently I was told that this is not considered evidence for evolution, that it is in fact fraudulent; biology books are just outdated/choose to print these invalid ideas. My 9th grade biology teacher showed us the similarities between developing embryos of different animals- they all look very similar to one another at certain stages; it was even hard to tell which one was the human embryo at some points. I've found a few sites related to this topic, but it seems that they are all very one sided. From what I learned in class, the similarity between developing embryos seems to show relations between different animals, that the extra stages are due to evolution slowly specializing the animal for certain traits. Was my teacher incorrect though? Was the evidence for this falsified and just not removed from my textbook? Or is this the work of people who don't know what they're talking about? I can understand that embryos might not follow their evolutionary path exactly while developing, but it's rather odd how closely different animal embryos resemble one another...haha, that was rather long, babbling ramble on my part, so I apologize for that, but I do appreciate any help or leads in the right direction. Just when I begin to think an idea is plausible...