Of course from the point of view of students in HS they generally can not
come up with any good evidence for why we insist that the Earth goes around
the Sun. They have been told it so much that they parrot it back without
any evidence to back it up. Every observation they cite can be explained
either way.
"An Inquiry into Science Education, Where the Rubber Meets the Road" is a
little book which should be read by all science educators. In it the author
convinces most students during a summer institute that they have no evidence
for which is true. He gets them to understand the difference between
evidence and just accepting what they have been told. When he asks them at
the end to write out how they they know the Sun goes around the Earth, they
now tend to say "It could be either according to what I know."
The observations of the other planets can be explained in an Earth centered
system as long as you do not try to figure the mechanism behind the orbits.
An important piece in the puzzle is the Foucault pendulum which shows that
the Earth is rotating. Then of course there are things like large
whirlpools and weather patterns. MS and HS students do not generally
understand this. Actually I bet most college students do not know about it
either, even in science classes. Can the pendulum be explained along with
an Earth centered system?