The changing role of the kindergarten in U.S. educational history illustrates the ways in which educational reforms are altered as they survive. From a reform aimed at altering the relationship between school and community, kindergarten has become essentially a way to get children ready for first grade. (SLD)

In answering the question posed in the title, the author begins with a story that businessman Jamie Vollmer told to educators a few years ago. In examining business involvement in U.S. school reform, the author looks at the 1890s through 1920s and the 1970s to the present--two points in history when business leaders and educational entrepreneurs,…