Homeschool students often find it useful to take the California High School Proficiency Exam (CHSPE) because they want to work or enter community college. If you’re new to homeschooling as we are, producing all the paperwork to be approved for accommodations (for example, extra time, or computer use for the essay) takes a little extra effort, but we were successful. In case it’s useful to anyone else, here’s what we did.

–>Note that when requesting accommodations, all documents have to be in by the regular registration deadline. The regular deadline for the next CHSPE is Feb. 15 for the March 16 test. More info on dates on the CHSPE calendar.

1. Get supporting documentation required for any accommodations you are requesting. This might be a letter from a professional or copy of a 504 plan if your child has recently been enrolled in a traditional school. It must be dated within 36 months (be less than 3 years old).

2. If your student is not yet 16 you will need to fill out and submit a Statement-in-Lieu if you haven’t already filed a PSA

3. Put a copy of your Statement-in-Lieu or of  PSA or have your education consultant fill out the school portion of the registration form.

4. Fill out the test registration form, including verifying student’s eligibility to take test (if student is 16, ID with date of birth meets the eligibility requirement). Otherwise parent as director/administrator of homeschool fills out that section of registration form.

5. Get a cashier’s check for the $110 test fee.

6. Mail/Fedex everything to the appropriate address on registration form.

–>Note that there is a different address if (like me) you are doing this at the last minute and using Fedex.

I Fedex’d everything on the Thursday one day before everything was due and we had the confirmation (by email) of registration within 2 business days and a physical letter approving the requested accommodations two business days later.