Family & Community Alternative Education
Massachusetts Proprietary Schools

Dental Assisting Regulations

The Board of Registration in Dentistry (Board) has received authority (M.G.L. c. 112, s. 51) to implement regulations to develop a process of registering dental assistants. As such, the Board has convened a working group to discuss what standards should be implemented to accomplish this task. The working group will be chaired by Board member Ms. Diane Grondin, CDA, M.Ed. The first meeting of the working group will be held on Wednesday, June 10 from 1-3 p.m. at the Division of Professional Licensure at 239 Causeway Street in Boston. The public is welcome to attend.

The registration requirement for dental assistants as a prerequisite to employment within the Commonwealth will affect licensed proprietary schools in three ways: minimum entrance requirements, minimum curriculum requirements, and minimum teacher qualifications. Exactly how these items will be affected will not be known until the Board sets its requirements.
Entrance Requirements: M.G.L. c. 112, s. 51 states that dental assistants must be 18 years of age and of good moral character. Whether applicants meet the latter may involve a CORI.
Curriculum: The training you provide must prepare students to pass the Board's benchmark(s) for individuals to become registered and therefore eligible to become employed in the field. While a benchmark for a professional credential is typically a test, a benchmark could also be a minimum number of classroom hours, a minimum number of clinical hours, and/or a minimum number of externship hours. As a result, schools may need to amend their curriculum (content, number of hours of instruction, number of clinical or hands-on hours).
Teacher Qualifications: As part of your proprietary school licensing requirements per 603 CMR 3.15(3), all dental assisting teachers will need to become registered in order to provide instruction.

Boards typically set a date by which all practitioners must become registered, which may include a "grandparenting" process by which currently employed dental assistants may become registered without undue burden. The Board may also set a date by which all training programs must be in compliance with the new requirements. Once the registration requirements are in place, the Department will notify schools of the timelines by which the Boards requirements must be met.

In preparing for these meetings, the Department surveyed the eight dental assisting programs offered by its licensed schools. The Department found that program lengths range widely from a low of 80 hours to a high of 960 hours. Three of the eight licensed proprietary schools are also accredited by a U.S. Department of Education-approved accrediting agency (ACCSCT).

While the Department will apprise schools of any changes to the requirements and deadlines by which changes must be implemented, we encourage you to participate in the discussion by attending the meetings and by reviewing the Position Paper of the ADAA/DANB Alliance: Uniform National Model for the Dental Assisting Profession (September 2005), which is available from ADAA's website http://www.dentalassistant.org/.

If you have any questions, please contact our office via email at proprietaryschools@doe.mass.edu