Need Help-Unique Situation

I need a little help with getting started.  First let me give a little background info that may be helpful.  My husband and I have joint custody of our 12 yo son-DS. We alternate weeks with his mother and stepfather.  We only live 15 minutes apart from each other, we’re all getting along great, and DS is much happier with this arrangement.  That said he has spent all his schooling years in a public school.  He’s now in the “seventh” grade, the decision to take him out of school and Homeschool him was made last May after the bullying got way out of control and no one at the school seemed to care to do anything about it.  

We’re really enjoying being able to Homeschool so far for many reasons, but we especially love that God isn’t outlawed, and that DS can learn at his own pace-this is especially helpful because he has ADD and it’s very hard for him to focus.  A few months ago, I stumbled onto the Charlotte Mason method.  I was sick of doing things the traditional method, I found this website and Ambleside Online and just started reading about Charlotte Mason and her methods.  I agreed with everything I read and felt very strongly about switching to the CM method of Homeschooling…but, for whatever reason, I ended up putting my feelings and thoughts toward it to the side and I continued with the traditional method.  Now we’re three months in, and I feel like a huge failure because the traditional method isn’t working for us at all.  This should’ve been clear to me in the beginning.  Public School obviously wasn’t doing a great job of teaching him before [there is so much he doesn‘t know, he can‘t read or spell well at all, and he doesn‘t seem to want to try]…so I don’t know why I thought repeating it would work.

What all of this boils down to is that I really want to use the Charlotte Mason method but because of our unique situation with joint custody and also the fact that our state requires end of year testing [on Math, Reading Comprehension, and Writing] I’m not quite sure where to go from here and how to apply it to our unique situation.   I don’t know if any of you are in similar situations or not, but any help you could provide, please do.  I’d love to hear any ideas/suggestions, etc.  I am seriously at the end of my rope here…thanks so much, and I’m sorry this was so long.