Michelle Rhee, who recently resigned as schools chancellor in Washington, D.C., is being talked up as a potential candidate for New Jersey education commissioner or Newark school superintendent after she leaves her current job on Oct. 31.
Gov. Chris Christie is her fan and Newark Mayor Cory Booker is her friend. Both have top education jobs to fill.
Right now, the official word is that Rhee isn't in the running for either job.
"We don't have any comment except to say that the governor admires what Michelle Rhee accomplished in the D.C. schools and wishes her well," Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said in an e-mail.
And Booker spokeswoman Anne Torres said in e-mail that "at this moment in time, there are no plans to talk to Ms. Rhee about the position."
Christie fired his education commissioner, Bret Schundler, in August after the state failed to win a $400 million competitive
Rhee stepped down Wednesday, several weeks after the man who appointed her, Mayor "We have agreed that the best way to keep the reforms going is for this reformer to step aside," she said Wednesday. If there is any lesson in Rhee's departure for other school reformers, it is that they need to pay attention to politics, said Mike Petrilli, vice president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a nonprofit education think tank. Petrilli blamed Fenty for failing to sell education reform and said he and Rhee were wrong to think that just showing gains in student achievement would bring residents around. "Michelle Rhee did mostly what she was hired to do: shake up the system, be a bull in a china AP: REFORMERS MULL MICHELLE RHEE'S DEPARTURE 