Kevin G. Welner is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, School of Education, specializing in educational policy and law. He is director of the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at CU Boulder. He earned both his J.D. (1988) and Ph.D. (1997) from UCLA. 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 鈥� reforms aimed at benefiting those who hold less powerful school and community positions. Welner has received the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Residency and the Post-Doctoral Fellowship awarded by the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation. He has also been recognized by the American Educational Research Association (AERA) as a Fellow and been given the AERA's Early Career Award (in 2006) and Palmer O. Johnson Award (best article in 2004).