That is true in Houston, TX. HISD will only accept applicants with “education degrees”. They will refuse any retired engineer or scientist, and Houston has plenty of engineers and scientists with the energy industry and NASA. The reason - The teacher is supposed to follow the script, no deviation, no illustrations of real world example based on his or her experience (except maybe leftist politics). No real subject matter experts (as in those with real world experience).
As for college, I was lucky. Many of my professors were retired engineers who were still doing consulting work on the side.
Thank you for your insight.
I thought I was the only one seeing this.