The purpose of this document is to provide timely and useful best practice information to help education agencies understand the different uses and benefits of School Courses for the Exchange of Data (SCED). This guide was developed to provide a brief overview of SCED, highlight the research application and benefits of SCED to users, and illustrate SCED uses with case studies. SCED is a voluntary, common classification system for prior-to-secondary and secondary school courses. It can be used to compare course information, maintain longitudinal data about student coursework, and efficiently exchange coursetaking records. SCED is based on a five-digit Course Code that provides a basic structure for classifying course content. Additional SCED elements and attributes provide descriptive information about each course. SCED is a free resource intended for federal, state, and local education agencies.