General Counsel: Philip H. Rosenfelt
Philip H. Rosenfelt is the Deputy General Counsel for Program Service in the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Education. In this post, he oversees legal services to the Department relating to the development and implementation of Federal programs that assist elementary and secondary, career, technical, and adult education, special education, rehabilitative services. He also oversees legal services on technology issues, the Institute of Education Sciences, educational equity, and oversight issues, as well as providing legal advice to the Office of the Secretary of Education on civil rights issues. He has served in this post beginning in July of 2006 (and in an acting capacity since March of 2005). Prior to that time, he served as the Assistant General Counsel for Elementary, Secondary, Adult and Vocational Education since 1980.
He also served as the Acting Secretary of Education in 2017 and 2021 during two transitions of Administrations, and served as Acting General Counsel of the Department, or the Deputy General Counsel “delegated to perform the functions and duties of the General Counsel” from July 2011 to December 2014.
He has worked as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Education and its predecessor -- the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare -- since 1971. He has received various awards for his federal service, including Senior Executive Service Awards. Most recently, in July of 2024, he was the sole winner of the “Public Service in the Government” Award for 2024 from the Burton Foundation, a non-profit awards program that recognizes excellence in law.
He serves as the Secretary's appointee to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council as an ex-officio member since 2006 and serves as the Secretary’s appointee to the Semi quintennial Commission as an ex-officio member since 2019. He is a member of the Department’s Artificial Intelligence Working Group, he co-leads a Federal interagency team on emerging legal issues in artificial intelligence and emerging technologies and is a member of the Executive Committee of the GC Exchange, an interagency group of more than 60 Federal legal offices that meets regularly to discuss common issues, and co-chairs a department an “SES Cadre” group that meets monthly. For more than six years, he also taught a course on education and Department history and its future to new employees every two weeks,
Mr. Rosenfelt was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and graduated from its public schools in 1962. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Pennsylvania-Wharton School in 1966, his J.D. degree from Columbia University Law School in 1969, and his L.L.M. from New York University School of Law in 1971. After law school, he spent two years working in housing law in New York City for community agencies that served low-income tenants in the Federal government's Volunteers In Service to America program, while doing course work for his L.L.M. in Poverty Law. He is a member of the New York State Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar.
In addition to his Federal work, Mr. Rosenfelt was the music editor and managing editor of two entertainment weekly newspapers, and taught courses in education law and administrative law at the Catholic University (Columbus) Law School and its Graduate School of Education. For thirty years, Mr. Rosenfelt has also helped organize and implement a cultural and education exchange program between the McLean (VA) High School Symphony Orchestra and the Detmolder Jungendorchester from the Christian-Dietrich-Grabbe-Gymnasium in Detmold, Germany.
Mr. Rosenfelt is married to Zell, a teacher in Fairfax County, VA, and has two daughters, Natalie, an attorney with the Department of Justice, and Marjorie, an attorney with the Office of Government Ethics. Mr. Rosenfelt's hobbies include literature, music, sports, technology, comedy, drawing, and current events.