Feeling incredibly defeated and discouraged. Help?

[rrr]

Ahh I've been trying to reply but it says it's awaiting mod approval - maybe because I had a link in there? So I'm going to try again now. Yes, I'm a teacher, sorry for the confusion! There are salary steps based on education, so you get paid, say, 47k for a bachelors, 56k for a masters, and 63k for a masters + 30 college credits. That's what I'm aiming for. The CLEP credits I sent were rejected by my employer, the NYC DOE. They really seem to do it on a case by case basis; when I called, they told me they debated a few of them but came to the conclusion that they were too similar to other courses on my transcript. I tried to make my case but I ended up talking to the director of the salary step office who told me it was a final decision.

As for why I didn't check beforehand, I did call and they said the courses just can't be duplicates of ones I've already taken. On the website it also says: "Note: A CLEP exam used to obtain a salary differential cannot be a duplication of earlier coursework for which you have been granted course credit (undergraduate or graduate)." I suppose we just had different definitions of what counted as "duplicates." For example, I didn't take the English Lit CLEP because I took a class called British Literature in college. But I've never taken an American Lit class so I figured that would be fine.

Is there anything else I can clarify? Thanks so much to everyone who has responded, I really really appreciate it.