Bill Honig says that he will continue to play a role as an adviser on education to Gov. Jerry Brown. But it won’t in an official capacity.

On Monday, Honig withdrew his nomination to the State Board of Education for unexplained reasons. Brown has named Ilene Straus, an assistant superintendent of Beverly Hills Unified and a middle school principal of the year in 1991, as Honig’s replacement.

Brown nominated Honig, a three-time State Superintendent of Public Instruction, last week, and he was to take office at Wednesday’s Board meeting. The governor’s announcement about Straus didn’t cite a reason for the withdrawal, and Honig wouldn’t specify either when I reached him.

“There are complications I don’t want to get into,” he said.

Honig served on the State Board of Education in Brown’s first administration before he was first elected to state superintendent in 1982. A powerful figure and early leader in the national standards movement, Honig resigned after being convicted on conflict-of-interest charges involving state education payments to a nonprofit run by his wife. The felony convictions were later reduced to misdemeanors.

Honig is president of Consortium on Reading Excellence (CORE), a Berkeley-based company that consults with school districts on math and reading literacy. He said he still looked forward to working with Brown and Michael Kirst, who’s expected to be elected president of the State Board on Wednesday, on issues of curriculum development and teacher instruction – Honig’s areas of expertise. Honig and Kirst served together on the State Board in the 1970s and early ‘80s.