Iowa DOT sees 900% increase in parents interested in teaching their children to drive

CEDAR RAPIDS — The number of Iowa parents taking steps to teach their children how to drive skyrocketed more than 900 percent in the first month that a law allowing them to replace certified instructors took effect.

However, the more than 600 pre-qualification requests the Iowa Department of Transportation has received from those parents represents only about 2 percent or less of the more than 30,000 intermediate licenses the department issues to new drivers annually.

A Cedar Rapids-based driving school has seen a small number of cancellations since the law took effect. But “the majority of parents don’t want the final responsibility” for preparing their teens to hit the road, said Stacia Bissell, who with her husband, Barry, started Right Way Driver Education 13 years ago.

Since 2011, Iowa parents who home-school their children have been allowed to include driver’s education in their curriculum. Senate File 546, which was approved earlier this year by the Iowa Legislature, extended that option to all parents in the state.

Before the change took effect July 1, Steven Stonehocker, driver ed coordinator for the Iowa Department of Transportation, received between 45 and 50 applications per month from parents who wanted to teach driver’s ed to their children. That more than doubled in June, and in July he received 531 prequalification applications.

So far, very few of those students have completed parent-taught courses “so it’s still too early for us to know if this is just a bubble or if it's going to be sustained growth,” Stonehocker said.

In a typical year, Kirkwood Community College provides driver’s ed to more than 600 students from the Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Linn-Mar and College Community school districts. Program Developer Zach Johnson hasn’t seen any change in enrollment for the classes starting the end of this month.

“It’s just too early to tell” if the law change will have an impact, he said, adding he doesn’t expect to any change in enrollments before next summer.

Bissell expects some parents will choose to be driver’s ed instructors to save the $350 or more the lessons cost.

However, she predicted “98 percent of parents will do what they should be doing — taking responsibility for getting their kids ready for driver education.” Most parents want the “second set of eyes of a reputable driver education program” for their children.

There’s another reason parents would choose to have someone else be the driver’s ed instructor, Bissell said.

“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” she said about the time and documentation required of parents. A parent-taught course requires 30 hours of driving time that has to be logged to show when lessons take place, what skills are taught and what deficiencies need to be corrected. That is sent to the state for someone to either approve or deny before moving on to the next step.

With Right Way and other driver’s ed companies, “you buy the package, you perform the package, we do all the record-keeping and we send out the certificate.”

Another difference, Stonehocker said, is that students in parent-taught programs will have to take an Iowa DOT driving test before receiving their license. Only about 7 percent of students from certified programs are required to take the test.

Even before a parent can teach drivers’ ed, he or she must qualify with the Iowa DOT by showing a driver’s license and a clean driving record for at least two years. A few parents have been denied because of driving violations, Stonehocker said.

He spends time answering questions about teaching driver’s ed from parents, who in many cases haven’t looked at the requirements and don’t understand what is required, he said. The how-to questions are “a giant red flag,” Stonehocker said.

The vast majority of the parents of the 600 to 800 students Right Way teaches each year do a great job preparing their children for driver’s ed and driving with them during the program, Bissell said.

However, her concern is that bad driving habits or a lack of knowledge could get passed on in parent-taught instruction. For example, she said, some people aren’t in the habit of looking over their shoulder before changing lanes. In most cases, that would be an automatic fail in an Iowa DOT driving test, Bissell said.

“When you get somebody professional behind the wheel, they're going to constantly teach from the perspective of ‘this is what you do, this is what you do all the time,’” she said.

The Iowa DOT now doesn’t track the records of drivers who go through a parent-taught program because the numbers are “minuscule” compared with the numbers completing state certified driver’s education programs, Stonehocker said. However, the Iowa DOT is preparing to capture more data “so we can show if there is a difference in driver performance,” he said.

“Our main concern is really just putting safe drivers on the road,” Stonehocker said. “With the volume we now have in the parent-taught program, we have to be able to show where, if any, deficiencies lie.”

For more information on parent-taught driver’s ed, visit iowadot.gov/mvd/driverseducation/Parent-taught.

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