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, vocational and adult education, special education, rehabilitative services, the Institute of Education Sciences, educational equity, and ethics provisions, as well as 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 from 1980 (with a few interruptions for serving in other positions in an "Acting" capacity). He has worked 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. In April of 2006, he was appointed by the Secretary to be the Department's representative on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council as an ex-officio member.

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 in 1971. After law school, he spent two years working in housing law in New York City for community agencies and 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 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 Graduate School of Education. Since 1995, Mr. Rosenfelt has also helped to organize and implement a successful 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, an English teacher in Arlington, VA, and has two daughters, Natalie, a trial attorney in the Department of Justice, and Marjie, a law student. Mr. Rosenfelt's hobbies include literature, music, sports, technology, comedy, drawing, and current events.