Kevin Welner is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder School of Education, specializing in educational policy. He is director of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at CU Boulder. He has authored or edited 10 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters, including 2016’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 present research examines the use and misuse of research in policymaking and explores various issues concerning the intersection between education rights litigation and educational opportunity scholarship. His research has also explored issues of tracking and detracking, small-school reform, tuition-tax-credit vouchers, and the change process associated with equity-minded reform efforts – reforms aimed at benefiting those who hold less powerful school and community positions. Welner has been recognized by the American Educational Research Association as a Fellow and been given the AERA’s Early Career Award (in 2006) and Palmer O. Johnson Award (best article in 2004). He received his B.A. in Biological Sciences from UCSB and his J.D. and Ph.D. from UCLA.