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Driver’s
License for Homeschoolers
Yes!
Homeschoolers can obtain driver’s licenses when they reach 15 (for a permit)
and 16 (for a junior operators). After taking
the written and/or the driving portion of the driver’s test at the local
testing site, you need to send the ID card, a check for the appropriate dollar
amount, and “documentation of enrollment status” to the department of motor
vehicles. The attendance officer or homeschool liaison in your county has a form
that he completes, which states that the teenager has attended school regularly.
Some of us have successfully written an official looking letter to the
department of motor vehicles in lieu of the county form stating that the
teenager is a registered homeschooler under WV Code 18-8-1 and has attended
school regularly.
Do Homeschoolers Qualify for Honor
Student Discount on Vehicle Insurance?
Lee Ross
-1993
Our
daughter, Hannah, turned fifteen in May and we started thinking about getting
her driver’s permit and eventually her license. We were curious to know how
much our car insurance premium would go up when she started driving, and if
taking driver’s education would lower the cost.
Our
insurance agent said that driver’s ed would lower the cost a little, but that
the biggest discount was for honor students that maintained a B average or above
in all subjects. “But our kids don’t get any grades,” we told him, and we
asked how we could qualify for this discount. Our agent checked on it and called
us back a day or so later to say that only accredited school grades could be
used to obtain the “honor student discount.”
That
bothered us. If Hannah were in school, we are almost certain that she would be
an honor student. We called the insurance company headquarters a month or so
later to inquire for ourselves. We found that if Hannah took driver’s ed and
was an honor student our insurance rates would actually decrease; with
driver’s ed only, our rates would increase considerably. We asked if there
were some standard for homeschoolers to obtain the “honor student discount”
and suggested that if there weren’t it seemed that homeschooled honor students
were being discriminated against. The woman that we spoke with could not answer
our question, so she referred us to the company underwriters.
The
chief underwriter was a very nice person and very open-minded about
homeschoolers. We suggested that, in the case of homeschoolers, CTBS or other
standard skills test scores could be substituted for grades, or perhaps
references from private instructors for piano, violin, voice or other lessons
could be used to determine a student’s diligence. He agreed to this in our
case.