Dental schools' relations with organized dentistry and accreditation: the Gies Report reconsidered.

The American Dental Education Association was formed with Gies' help in 1923 from four existing groups to better represent the interests of dental schools. An independent organization of examiners, practitioners, and educators, the Dental Education Council of America, started in 1909 to rate and later accredit schools. Later this group came under the influence of the ADA as the Council on Dental Education. Modern accreditation of dental education began in 1941, under the ADA Council on Dental Education, but has gradually achieved more independence. Gies favored the work of guiding and developing dental education under the hand of a small number of representative experts, and he cautioned against the sway of politics--a warning as valid today as it was three-quarters of a century ago.