Buckle up: N.C. may no longer require driver education
By Katie Reeder • SMN Intern
Young drivers in North Carolina may no longer be required to take driver education to get their learner’s permit if a Senate subcommittee’s modifications to House Bill 97 are passed by the General Assembly.
North Carolina currently requires teens under 18 to pass a driver education course before they can get their learner’s permit. The state shoulders some of what it costs high schools to offer these programs, and high schools can charge students up to $65 to cover the rest.
Haywood County Schools spent $155,489 on driver education last year, which came out to about $299 per student, said Bill Nolte, associate superintendent of Haywood County Schools.
Nolte said if state funding for driver education stops, Haywood County Schools will no longer offer the program because it simply will not have the money. It’s a symptom of a larger funding issue by the state, he said.
“If we got other funding we wouldn’t cut teachers. If we had other funding, we wouldn’t have lost the 130-plus employees that we’ve lost in the last five years,” he said. “We would’ve kept our class sizes lower. If we had other funding we’d be in better resource-shape.”
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But Sen. Jim Davis, R-Franklin, said the program has not led to results that justify the state’s expenditure. A 2014 report by the General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division found that, in the span of six years, an average of 46 percent of students who took the test to get their license failed. All of those students had previously passed a driver education course.
“We think that’s unacceptable for the money that we’re paying and for the money that students and parents are spending,” he said.
The report also shows, however, that the failure rate has decreased over the years. In the 2007 to 2008 testing period, 59 percent of students failed, but this figure dropped to 33 percent in the 2012 to 2013 period.
A Senate-added provision to House Bill 97 removes the $65 cap on what students may be charged and instead reads that what schools charge cannot “exceed the actual costs of providing the course.” The bill also suggests moving the program to the community college system and out of high schools.
Davis said as the budget is worked out, the state might reallocate money from high school driver education programs to the community college system. He said under this proposal, driver education would no longer be a requirement for a learner’s permit, which would give students more freedom in deciding how they want to learn to drive.
They could learn from a parent, guardian or private driving school. He also expressed confidence in the community college system’s ability to carry out the program, as the system already has courses for motorcycle safety and commercial driver’s licenses.
“The community college system has demonstrated a successful rate with their motorcycle safety program and with their CDL program, so they’re doing it well,” he said. “And if you find a part of state government that’s not working so well and you find a part of state government that is, then turn it over to them,” he said.
Mark Hooper, director of transportation for Jackson County Schools, said he disagreed with this move. He thinks the best practice would be to leave the program in the high schools.
In Jackson and Haywood counties, driver education instructors are licensed teachers already in the schools. Nolte said this helps ensure students receive quality instruction.
Hooper said a community college could not simply replace a high school as the place of instruction. He raised concerns about how a college would handle a program geared toward 15- and 16-year-olds.
“I’m not sure exactly how a community college can operate a program that’s designed for high-school-aged students,” he said. “They’re not at the community college. It seems to me a logistical problem in trying to operate a driver education program at a community college.”
Sen. Erica Smith-Ingram, D-Northhampton, also took issue with moving the program to the community college system. She is the primary sponsor of a proposed amendment to restore driver education funding.
Smith-Ingram questioned, among other things, how students without a license and with working parents would get to the class. She fears moving the program to community colleges will make the class less accessible. High schools throughout all 100 North Carolina counties have driver education programs, but the state has only 58 community colleges.
“Where do the students who live in a county that does not have a community college go to take this course? How much will the course cost?” she said in an email. “These questions are the basis for my reservations with the seventh edition of the budget and its failure to fund driver education.”
Sen. Joyce Waddell, D-Mecklenburg, also supports restoring driver education funding, She said one of the biggest values of a formal driver education system is safety and the opportunity it allows new drivers to learn from a professional.
“We want driver education to be taught by people who are competent, who know what they are doing, who know what they are teaching,” she said. “Family members may not have the necessary skills to teach them.”
Hooper said having parents teach their children to drive may work for some people, but he believes professional instructors are best because they know the methodology behind the skills students need to become proficient drivers.
He said instructors also teach skills parents may not think about. Hooper teaches his students defensive driving skills and the importance of looking for potential hazards — skills which many adult drivers often forget about.
Smith-Ingram said driver education has helped reduce the number of fatal wrecks involving 16 and 17-year-old drivers. A 2014 study by the AAA Foundation found a 4.3-percent decrease in the expected number of collisions in teens who took a driver education report.
“Driver’s education provides life-saving instruction for novice drivers and — I would even venture — contributes significantly the safety of the 9 million North Carolinians who travel our highways, roads and interstates daily,” she said.
Smith-Ingram’s amendment proposes reserving a corporate tax credit for one year to fund the program, meaning it would not take away from other educational programs in the budget. Smith-Ingram said her suggestion for longer term funding would be to incorporate driver education into the 10th-grade health and physical education curriculum.
Hooper said the ideal situation, of course, would be to fully fund the program, but he said it would be better to charge for the program than to discontinue the state’s requirement of it.
“Of all the things you learn in high school … the one thing you’re probably going to do forever until you get older is drive,” Hooper said. “So I can’t see why building a good, solid educational foundation for that lifelong skill is not important to people.”
