Raising the age of eligibility to enter kindergarten has not eliminated variations in children's readiness for school, and parents and teachers have used delayed entry and retention as strategies to accommodate these variations. Information from the 1993 and 1995 National Household Education Survey is used to describe the numbers and characteristics of children who experienced delayed kindergarten entry or kindergarten retention, as well as their subsequent performance and adjustment in school. The 1993 and 1995 surveys indicate that 9 percent of all first- and second-graders had been held out of kindergarten, and that boys experienced delay more often than girls. In 1995, white, non-Hispanic children were twice as likely as black, non-Hispanic children to have entered kindergarten late. Overall prevalence of kindergarten retention was similar for 1993 and 1995, affecting 6 and 5 percent, respectively. In terms of school performance and adjustment, in 1993, parents of children who had experienced delayed entry received less negative feedback from teachers on two of five indicators; in 1995, parents were less likely to report school performance problems on one of four indicators. Children who had been required to spend 2 years in kindergarten performed significantly worse than their first- and second-grade classmates on all 5 of the 1993 indicators and on 2 of the 4 indicators in 1995. Multivariate analysis of delayed entry, retention, and school performance indicated that when demographic, socioeconomic, and developmental factors were taken into account, the differences in school performance between delayed-entry students and other students was small but significant in 1993, but the differences were essentially eliminated in the 1995 data. The same was true for differences between students who had been retained and other students. (HTH)