Malec, for example, says that in her test, thetape recorder used in the dictation portion wasgarbled, the wait to take the test lasted over anhour and the questions were ambiguous.
She says she is worried that these problems,though small, are representative of NES's biggerproblems.
"If they can't fix these little things, how doyou deal with the big ones?" she asks.
Cheryl T. Haynes, who has been teaching atCambridge's Martin Luther King Jr. School for 24years, thinks there is another way to testteachers.
Haynes says that an in-school evaluation likethe King School uses, where the principalevaluates the teachers in a class-room setting, ismore relevant.
For Katherine Kelley, president of theMassachusetts Federation of Teachers, the teachertests have become a political tool.
"[Teachers] are constantly castrated for notdoing their jobs when they're spending hours uponhours doing extra work," she says. "They've gottenno credit and they've gotten constant bashing."
Kelley says the recent debate has brought themorale of teachers to what she says is the lowestin thirty years.
Malec seems to exemplify this.
Although Malec, despite her tribulations,passed the teacher exam, she is looking to otherprofessions as a 27-year-old mother of twochildren.
"It's frustrating because it's really affectingpeople's career choices. This is really affectingpeople's lives. It's really a shame," she says.
"I find it hard to get excited about a jobwhere you are certain to take home work everynight, you can only go to the bathroom atspecified times of the day, and everyone (parents,politicians, etc.) complains that you have it easyor make too much money," she said in an e-mailmessage.