In Maryland and I suspect many other states, obtaining a learner's permit involves no training whatsoever about operation or control of a vehicle. It consists of a very long wait in the DMV paper processing area and a very short, multiple choice test on traffic law trivia.
The notion that having jumped through the requisite government paperwork hoops would have somehow made this 15 yr old, first time driver competent to drive and thus prevented this accident is not logical.
One family is already ruined here. The knee jerk reaction that since someone died then by god we have to punish someone is only going to succeed in ruining another.
No, of course the permit might not have changed anything. But it did open the Dad up to charges.
I think the salient point here is that Dad didn't have control of the car at all times. Better to drop the transmission by throwing it into neutral than to hit someone.