With 6,000 teens killed on the highways each year and more than 300,000 injured, this seems obvious:
Driver's education has long been an afterthought on the academic agenda. As the school year begins, federal and state leaders are rethinking how much sense that really makes.
Of all the classes students take, driver's ed may be the only one designed to keep them alive. Yet the typical course isn't winning raves from accident and safety experts.
The National Transportation Safety Board found in 2005 that the standard course hasn't changed much in 50 years, was designed arbitrarily, and isn't preparing teens for the road.
What's more, the NTSB found, there's never even been a good evaluation of driver's education — leaving schools with little guidance on what to teach and what to require.
Maybe we ought to put driver's ed on the ISTEP-plus agenda.
