Kevin Welner is professor emeritus and research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, specializing in educational policy and law. He’s also the director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at CU Boulder. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, including Legal Rights, Local Wrongs: When Community Control Collides with Educational Equity (2001, SUNY Press); NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling (2008, Rowman & Littlefield); Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance (2013, Oxford Univ. Press, with Prudence Carter); and School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment (2021, Teachers College Press, with Wagma Mommandi. Welner’s research explores various policy issues, including those at the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship. Welner has been recognized by the American Educational Research Association as a Fellow and been given the AERA’s Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award (in 2017), Early Career Award (in 2006), Palmer O. Johnson Award (best article in 2004). The Horace Mann League gave Welner its Outstanding Public Educator Award in 2018. He received his B.A. in Biological Sciences from UCSB and his J.D. and Ph.D. from UCLA. Welner chairs the Board of Trustees for the Education Law Center. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and serves on its Board of Directors.
