One goal of the National Forum on Education Statistics is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and program decision-makers. One approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum members to produce "best practice" guides in areas of high interest to those who collect, maintain, and use data about elementary and secondary education: standardizing how data systems record student race and ethnicity is one of these high-interest areas. This guide is developed to assist state and local education agencies in their implementation of new federal race and ethnicity categories to reduce redundant efforts within and across states, improve data comparability, and lessening reporting burden. It serves as a toolkit from which users may select and adopt strategies that will help them quickly begin the process of implementation in their agencies. Data, information systems, and program staff in states and school districts comprise the primary audience for this guide. Vendors of student and staff information systems for these agencies are a secondary, but important, audience. This guide covers all stages and aspects of implementation, from developing procedures at the state level to actual re-identification of a student's or staff member's race and ethnicity. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the background and rationale for the changes; Chapter 2 discusses the important stage of developing needed policies and procedures; Chapter 3 suggests ways to train staff and communicate with the public; Chapter 4 discusses in detail ways to re-identify student and staff member race and ethnicity; and Chapter 5 presents options of coding, storing, and reporting data, and bridging the new standards to earlier reports. Three appendixes include: (1) Final Guidance on Maintaining, Collecting, and Reporting Racial and Ethnic Data to the U.S. Department of Education (Federal Register, Vol. 72, No. 202, Friday, October 19, 2007); (2) Letter Issued by U.S. Department of Education and Answers to Selected Policy Questions Related to the Final Guidance; and (3) I'll Cross That Bridge When I Come to It: A Guide to Bridging Methodologies. (Contains 15 footnotes, 9 exhibits, 6 case studies, and 2 tables.) [This report was produced by the Race and Ethnicity Data Implementation Task Force.]