Kevin Welner

Professor of Education, University of Colorado - Boulder School of Education Director, National Education Policy Center

Kevin Welner is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, specializing in educational policy. He’s also the director of the National Education Policy Center, housed at CU Boulder. He has authored or edited a dozen books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, including 2019’s law school casebook, Education and the Law (co-authored with Stuart Biegel and Bob Kim) and 2013’s Closing the Opportunity Gap (co-edited with Prudence Carter). Welner’s research examines the change process associated with equity-minded reform efforts – reforms aimed at benefiting those who hold less powerful school and community positions. Other research concerns charter-school access issues, the use and misuse of research in policy making, and various issues around the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship. His research has also explored issues of tracking and detracking, small-school reform, and tuition-tax-credit vouchers. 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.

Press Clippings:

• Can colleges make students get Covid vaccines? Here’s what experts say, CNBC, February 2021.
• “Impeachment: The Sequel | Kevin Welner,” OnEducation Podcast, January 2021.
• Educators say Betsy DeVos is funneling pandemic funding into private schools, NBC News, August 2020.
• ‘Government Schools’ or Public Schools? Trump, DeVos, and the Language of School Choice, EdWeek, February 2020.
• Religious School Choice Case May Yield Landmark Supreme Court Decision, The New York Times, 2020.
• This Supreme Court case could deliver a win for school choice advocates. What might happen next?,
  Chalkbeat, 2020.
• Um, that’s not what Warren actually said about charter schools, Washington Post, 2019.
• Fatal shooting complicates future of Colorado charter school, Associated Press, 2019.
• Here are 7 ‘Schools of Opportunity’ that ‘show us a way forward’, Washington Post, 2019.
• New York City offers some unpleasant truths about school improvement, Washington Post, 2019.
• U.S. News Shakes Up Its National High School Rankings — 5 Things to Know About What’s Changed, The 74, 2019.
• At this school, the inclusive culture matters as much as the curriculum, Washington Post, 2019.

Keywords: School funding, Education policy, Public education