Associate Professor Kevin Welner of the University of Colorado at Boulder's School of Education has been awarded the 2006 Early Career Award from the American Educational Research Association.
The 25,000-member organization honored Welner for his research on education policy. The award recognizes "a scholar's distinguished portfolio of cumulative education research within the first decade after receiving a doctoral degree."
Welner is an expert in school reform, program evaluation, school vouchers, legal issues in schools and the No Child Left Behind Act. He is the author of three books: "Legal Rights, Legal Wrongs: When Community Control Collides with Educational Equity," "Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman's Story of Survival" and "Navigating the Politics of Detracting."
He also is director of the Education and the Public Interest Center in the School of Education. The center's goal is to examine and contribute to the formation, evaluation and implementation of education policy by contributing information, analysis and insight.
Welner was honored during the group's annual meeting this month in San Francisco.
AERA is a national professional association based in Washington, D.C., whose members conduct research and evaluation in education. Founded 90 years ago, the association's members come from disciplines including psychology, sociology, history, education, economics, philosophy, anthropology, statistics and political science.