Montana Behind-the-Wheel Practice for Teens and Parents

First: the in-car lessons at school

Over 130 Montana districts offer a state approved course. Each one has a floor of 60 instruction hours, at least 6 of them spent driving in traffic, stretched over 25 days or more, and is taught by a state approved traffic educator.

To teach it, an educator needs a current Montana teaching license, a clean enough driving history, and traffic education coursework from Montana State University-Northern. All of them are trained to give the official road test inside the class, under what the state calls the Cooperative Driver Testing Program.

If your district teaches the classroom online

Section 20-7-503 allows a district to deliver its classroom hours through online or distance learning, after which a parent or guardian can take over the driving portion. That arrangement belongs to the district; a private website is not the same thing. Ask your district whether it runs one and what the parent taught driving involves.

Before you plan practice, confirm which type of course your teen finished, since the hour targets differ.

Setting the target: 50 or 75 hours

Traditional course graduates need 50 hours or more signed off by a parent or guardian, with 10 at night. When no parent is around, another responsible adult who has watched the teen drive can sign instead.

Graduates of an alternative course approved by the Department of Justice need 75 hours, 15 of them at night. Whoever sits beside your teen must be a parent, a legal guardian, or a licensed driver of 18 or more whom the parent has approved.

A worked example: 50 hours across 26 weeks is roughly two hours a week. Two school runs and one longer weekend drive will get you there without a last month scramble.

Every week: keeping the log

According to the MVD, the person keeping the log is the parent, guardian or other responsible adult, not the teen. The MVD has a printable Teen Driving Log and also recommends RoadReady, and either a paper copy or a phone screen is accepted at the test.

Fill it in when you park, not the night before the test. A log rebuilt from memory is easy to get wrong and hard for anyone to trust.

Every week: what to practice in Montana

Six months is long enough to meet most of what Montana will throw at a new driver: passing on a two-lane highway, loose gravel and dirt, animals near the road around dusk, winter ice and snow, and hours at highway speed. The state's GDL guidance says darkness is when young drivers crash most, so do the night hours as proper drives, not a lap of the block.

Ride the routes your teen will drive first: school, work, practice. Also talk about friends in the car. Every teen passenger who is not family pushes crash risk up, which explains the passenger cap on the restricted license.

Near the end: form 21-1600

Form 21-1600, the Graduated Driver Licensing Parent/Legal Guardian Certification, is filled out before the road test. On it you confirm the practice hours and state that for the last six months your teen has had no traffic conviction, no alcohol or drug conviction or adjudication, and nothing pending in court.

Should that statement be untrue, do not sign; the MVD can instead stretch the permit by a year or to age 18. Also know that whoever signs the license application becomes financially responsible for damage your teen does behind the wheel.

On test day

A student who already passed the road test in class books Driver Ed Waived. Even so, the MVD draws one in ten of them at random for a second drive at the station. Students who did not test in class book Driver Ed Road Test, and station route teens book an ordinary drive test.

Pack the folder: the unexpired permit, the log, the signed 21-1600, current registration and insurance proof, and your teen's identity, residency and presence documents. The car should have intact glass and working brake lights, taillights and blinkers.

After the basics: Montana DRIVE workshops

Montana DRIVE is an OPI program of one day emergency skills sessions held on a closed course at Lewistown. Since 1979 it has trained over 18,000 drivers. The 2026 calendar had teen sessions July 6 to 11 and adult sessions from June 2 through August 14.

Think of DRIVE as a bonus layer of skill. Your teen still needs the full school course and every supervised hour you log.