Despite flying in teachers from the Philippines, the Clark County School District says it's still short 287 teachers to start the school year, and will fill those gaps with long-term substitutes.

But anyone who wonders what the Clark County School District's "teacher shortage" is really all about need only read reporter Antonio Planas' Thursday account of California classroom veteran Theresa Porter's attempt to find work in our local Las Vegas schools.

Ms. Porter holds a master's degree in English literature and has 14 years of experience teaching in Japan and California. She is licensed by the state of California to teach students whose primary language is not English -- an area where the Clark County district says it has "high needs."

Not only that, Theresa Porter was named "teacher of the year" in the 2004-2005 school year, beating out 140 other faculty members at the high school where she taught in Stockton, Calif. But at her interview with the Clark County School District, Ms. Porter was turned down because, all those years ago when she was starting out as a teacher, she did her student teaching at the wrong place.

Ms. Porter fulfilled her California student-teaching requirement at San Joaquin Delta College and Fresno Pacific University. But Nevada does not recognize those programs.

This is like having Bill Gates or Steve Jobs show up offering to teach a course in entrepreneurship at the local business college, and telling them, "Sorry, you never did complete all your required semesters of gym class in high school, did you?" This is like refusing to give Audie Murphy his medals or allowing him to train other young recruits how to conduct themselves in combat -- because you find out he lied about his age to get into the Army.

Nevada state law requires all incoming teachers to fulfill eight credits of student teaching before they can set foot in a classroom here, and that requirement is not unreasonable, responds Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of public instruction.

Before the district could hire Ms. Porter, she would have to obtain a provisional license, giving her three years to go back and do her required student teaching, Mr. Rheault explained.

But as it turns out, there's no need. After briefly considering a position as a long-term substitute at Rancho High School -- making $110 per day without benefits -- Ms. Porter said Tuesday she has accepted a job in Bakersfield, Calif., teaching high school English to students whose primary language is not English ... for $60,300 a year, plus benefits.

"It's a far different welcome on this side of the hill," Ms. Porter says, further protesting, "I'm not just any teacher -- I'm excellent. The state is blocking a lot of qualified people from teaching."

Because no one within the Clark County School District seems actually empowered to determine whether someone would make a good teacher (hint: principals are traditionally pretty good at this), we see an increasingly dysfunctional bureaucracy depending on an arcane system of "credentialism" which would rather import Filipina newcomers to temporarily swell the ranks (one wonders how they'll do in explaining the Bill of Rights), than hire a California "teacher of the year."

This bureaucracy would refuse to hire Albert Einstein to teach high school physics.

This bureaucracy values the kinds of dull minds who are content to dutifully put in scores of make-work hours pretending that education colleges actually teach anything of value, over those who have actually excelled in real classrooms, or in the subject areas they will be expected to teach.

You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.