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Kevin Welner, professor of educational foundations, policy and practice at University of Colorado Boulder School of Education and director of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), has been awarded the 2017 Outstanding Public Communication of Education Research Award. This is only the second year this national honor has been awarded, and AERA confers just 13 awards annually. 

The award recognizes a scholar who has excelled in conveying important findings and research to wide audiences and who has demonstrated the capacity to deepen understanding and appreciation of the value of education research in the public sphere.

"This is a great recognition for the work Kevin has done with NEPC, through his prolific writing, and his tireless work to provide important and critical analysis of educational policy," said Dean Kathy Schultz.

Professor Welner authored a major book on tuition tax credits for private schooling, co-edited a book on education policy and law, and most recently, co-authored with Prudence Carter the Closing the Opportunity Gap published by Oxford University Press.

Gene V. Glass, Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Mary Lout Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University remarked, “Kevin Welner is a superbly trained scholar, with a solid background of legal studies, who takes seriously the obligation to bring the best thinking about education issues to the attention of the public.”

Welner is well known for his books, which include, Legal Rights, Local Wrongs: When Community Control Collides with Educational Equity and Navigating the Politics of Detracking with Jeannie Oakes as well as NeoVouchers: The Emergence of Tuition Tax Credits for Private Schooling.

2017 AERA award recipients will be honored for their outstanding scholarship and service at the fifth annual Awards Luncheon, on April 29, at the AERA Annual Meeting, the largest annual gathering of scholars in the education research field.

“This award is less a recognition of me as an individual, and more a recognition of the amazing collaboration between NEPC’s staff and our more than 120 fellows in Universities across the nation," Welner humbly pointed out. "Together we are able to ensure that the latest academic research speaks to the most pressing education problems of our time.”

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