I learned to drive in the Mililani High School parking lot with my parents taking turns in the passenger seat every Saturday afternoon when I was 15. The next year, the Legislature passed a law requiring teens under 18 to take a certified driver’s education course in order to get a license. It was probably the right call.

But getting into one of those courses is easier said than done, according to an April 2025 performance audit of the state’s driver education system.

If you go the private route, it can cost as much as $550. The state’s program only costs $10, but you might never get in. During the 2023–2024 school year, only 35 of Hawaiʻi’s 68 public high schools offered driver education at all, and those that did often had long waitlists, inconsistent application processes, or no information available to the public. In 2022, just 11% of public high school students ages 15 to 18 were enrolled in the DOE’s driver education program.

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The numbers alone are concerning, but the Office of the State Auditor made it clear that the real problem is structural. For decades, both the Department of Education and the Department of Transportation have failed to meet their legal responsibilities to create a coordinated, accessible statewide driver education system, according to the audit.

“The program is not operated well at all,” State Auditor Les Kondo said in an interview.

He was referring to the efforts of both departments. The Legislature created driver education as a statewide program in 1966, assigning the DOE to establish the program and teach students.

But the DOE has failed to adopt administrative rules to govern the program, the audit states.

“Without the rules, the department basically has allowed schools — whoever the principal wants — to offer driver education, to offer it however they want, without any kind of criteria as to who gets to enroll, use of waitlists, you know, those type of things that would make it more transparent and fairer,” Kondo said.

No wonder access is wildly unequal.

No Curriculum Ever Adopted

Kondo’s office found that each school ran its driver education program differently — if it was offered at all. Some schools do not maintain waitlists. Some do not provide enrollment information publicly. In one case, students at a charter school needed to fill out an “interest form” to trigger the school offering more classes. At another, the instructor picked students by cutting up names and pulling them from a container. And, Kondo said, there was even a case where the course was first offered to football players.

Students on neighbor islands have fewer instructors and fewer options. While 21 O‘ahu schools offered driver education, only 11 schools on Hawai‘i island did, along with two schools in Maui County, and only one on Kaua‘i. Lāna‘i had no instructors during the audit period.

The audit also examined the Department of Transportation’s role in the program, which is limited to certifying the driver education curriculum and driver education instructors.

The audit found that the director of the DOT never certified a curriculum or formed the curricula task force, as required by the department’s own administrative rules. Instead, that responsibility was taken up by a highway safety specialist, a lower-level employee who, over a decade, expanded her role significantly and inserted herself into areas far outside her legal authority, the audit states without identifying her.

Among other audit findings: the highway safety specialist handpicked master trainers, including one who co-owned a property with her. She required instructors to pay those trainers $200 for refresher courses if they missed a deadline or filed the wrong paperwork. She suspended instructors without due process and voided student certificates retroactively. In some cases, this left students unable to take their road tests. She also blocked DOE efforts to expand access to virtual courses.

“She was vastly exceeding what we understood to be the Department of Transportation’s authority,” Kondo said, adding, “Both the Department of Transportation as well as the Department of Education, they had very little, if any, involvement or oversight at a higher level by management as to how those programs were operating.”

The Departments Respond

The DOE declined a request for an interview on the audit. Instead, it provided a statement from Assistant Superintendent Teri Ushijima, Office of Curriculum and Instructional Design, that said the DOE “has initiated various actions to improve the program and make the process easier for students and families.”

Ushijima challenged the auditor’s interpretation of the statute, saying, “The Legislature did not mandate a driver education program.” Instead, she said, it only “authorized” it.

While the DOE has plans to review student demand and develop a web-based registration system to standardize the sign-up process, it appears the department does not find it necessary to issue a comprehensive set of administrative rules.

The Department of Transportation also declined an interview request. Russell Pang, DOT’s public information officer, said the director and deputy director were traveling and instead pointed to the department’s written response in the final pages of the audit.

In that response, DOT disagrees with the auditor’s assessment that it lacked oversight, stating “DOT absolutely took an interest in the driver education program and believes the program is one of the best tools to prepare Hawaii’s youth to drive safely.”

The DOE also points out that the administration “met with staff to provide corrective actions.” But those actions came years late and weren’t always effective, according to the auditor’s report.

The department’s written response also said that the DOT had formed a driver education task force which reviewed curricula that was approved by the director in January 2025 and plans to start certifying instructor and master trainer curricula.

Bottom line: The state has failed for decades to make those courses accessible and regulate them adequately.

Mandating that teens complete a driver education course in order to get their license is a reasonable public safety measure, but the state’s failure to provide equitable access to courses and regulate them has done a disservice to those young people.