Fact #2: The guy who chose Duncan doesn’t particularly care about Fact #1.

Fact #3: That guy’s opinion is the only one that matters.

I mention this because there will be a new business item introduced at the National Education Association Representative Assembly (RA) in Atlanta this July that, in part, calls upon NEA and AFT to come up with “a unified plan to replace Arne Duncan as Secretary of the Department of Education and bring about the changes in the policies of the Department of Education that will help teachers teach and students learn.” It will be introduced by Buffalo Teachers Federation president Phil Rumore.

The convention delegates can spend their time any way they please, but since 2009, when Duncan addressed the RA in his first year as Secretary of Education, there have been annual efforts to have him removed. In 2010, there was NBI 44, urging President Obama to replace Duncan “with a person who is aligned with the interests of the NEA, its members, and especially the students it serves.” In 2011, there was NBI C, a 13-charge indictment of Duncan and his crimes against humanity, and last year there was NBI 25, which read, “The NEA Representative Assembly calls for the immediate removal of Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, and an end to Race to the Top.”

Despite all this, there hasn’t been even the slightest hint in four years that Duncan is in any danger of losing his job. Clearly, being part of the Reptilian Conspiracy has its advantages.

NEA had its chance to keep Duncan out of DC entirely, and failed to take it. The union could have endorsed Hillary Clinton when she and Obama were neck-and-neck for the Democratic nomination. But there was pro-Obama sentiment at the very top of NEA, despite the obvious signs of fundamental differences in his approach to education policy and that of NEA. It might have even worked out if they had endorsed Obama when he really needed it. Instead the union hemmed and hawed, only formally endorsing Obama after he had already wrapped up the nomination.

The fallout from that process was Arne Duncan. No use complaining about it now. There will be a change in the policies of the Department of Education. It will come in 2017, guaranteed.

My dictionary defines moratorium as a “suspension of activity or an authorized period of delay or waiting.” A delay, rather than an outright halt, is what leads some to believe that Weingarten is exercising a triangulation strategy rather than taking up a sincere position. AFT’s history suggests that whatever the purpose, the effectiveness of the moratorium is mixed, at best.

Just prior to the Common Core moratorium, Weingarten was in Philadelphia, where she was arrested for a protest of the School Reform Commission. She and the other activists involved were calling for a one-year moratorium on school closings. That seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Last year AFT trumpeted its support for a nationwide moratorium on out-of-school suspensions. The statistics from California suggest that’s going to be a tough row to hoe.

Going further back to 2008, when Weingarten was president of the United Federation of Teachers, she urged a moratorium on new teacher hiring until all of those in the Absent Teacher Reserve (ATR) were placed. This gained some traction, as in May 2009 the city instituted a hiring freeze but allowed principals to take on ATR teachers.

In 2003, Weingarten offered a moratorium on sabbaticals as a bargaining chip to avoid layoffs of paraprofessionals. In 2002, AFT famously issued a report on charter schools, concluding there should be a moratorium on further charter school expansion “until more convincing evidence of their effectiveness and viability is presented.” Since that time, the number of charter schools has grown from 2,000 to more than 5,700.

Moving back into ancient history, in 1998 AFT called for a moratorium on emergency credentials for teachers, and in 1994 the union wanted a moratorium on full inclusion of special education and disabled student in mainstream classrooms.

Perhaps this time will be different, but if history is any guide, the moratorium will not turn into a mass movement.

That’s fine, but it tends to lead to the interchangeable use of terms that aren’t synonymous. In California, school districts are required to issue preliminary layoff notices by March 15. Traditionally the phrase “pink slips” has been used to describe these notices. It’s a rare occurrence when districts know how much money they will receive from the state by that deadline, so they issue far more pink slips than necessary, in order to err on the side of caution.

Comes May 15, the deadline for “final” layoff notices, and suddenly most of those with pink slips will be returning. This year it’s 57 percent. Last year it was 60 percent.

But the new school year doesn’t start in May, and over the summer months and even into September more of those laid-off employees are recalled. The California Legislative Analyst looked strictly at teachers, and found that last year 96 percent of laid-off teachers were rehired. He also noted that not all districts were affected equally during the recession. At the worst of it, 36 percent of districts had no layoffs at all. Last year, 65 percent of districts had no layoffs.

Another confusing factor is that CTA accumulates all non-renewal notices into its pink slip and layoff notice figures, including those issued to probationary teachers. Since it will never happen that every probationary teacher receives tenure, there is a base level of pink slips that will never be entirely eliminated.

EdSource surveyed the state’s 30 largest districts about their staffing in 2010-11, which was the worst year for public school teachers. Of the 96,226 teachers employed in March, 94,013 were still employed in October (97.7%).

So how can this be squared with the reductions-in-force we know have occurred in California? Easy. Layoffs are not the major contributor, but attrition and retirements.

At its peak in 2008-09, California had 610,494 teachers and education support employees. Last year that number was down to 572,591 – a reduction of 6.2 percent. Enrollment dropped by almost 1 percent during that same period, but it is true that the remaining employees had more kids per person to deal with.

That’s a lot of numbers to say a simple thing: Just because we have fewer employees doesn’t mean a lot of people lost their jobs.

In his list of achievements, he included the re-election of President Obama. When the union’s endorsed candidate wins, that’s a victory, but offense? It contradicts what NEA was saying during the campaign, where the President was often described as a “goalie,” as in this blog post from NEA vice president Lily Eskelsen:

A goalie doesn’t make points. A goalie keeps the other side from making points. If we keep the Crazy House (i.e. House of Representatives); if the Senate goes Crazy, they will pass legislation to kill unions and to kill Social Security and to kill Medicare, and there will be only one hope that this radical legislation will not become laws that kill the middle-class. Our Goalie, President Obama, holding the veto pen.

Stocks also listed NEA litigation against Florida’s teacher evaluation law, Alabama’s immigration law and California’s Proposition 8 – all of which sound like defensive measures against other people’s initiatives.

Stocks described how NEA has begun to expose the American Legislative Exchange Council “using behind-the-scenes work.” That sounds like defense, too, not to mention that NEA has been trying to “expose” ALEC since, oh, 1996.

Everyone wants to be the initiator of events, rather than the victim. But driving off the army surrounding your castle walls is not gaining ground.

* Marietta English was re-elected as president of the Baltimore Teachers Union. This will be her seventh three-year term, and it has become so pro forma that the union didn’t even bother to announce the tabulated vote, the turnout, or even if she had a challenger.

* The New Jersey Education Association had an election/accession, as incumbent vice president Wendell Steinhauer moved up to president, and secretary-treasurer Marie Blistan advanced to vice president. We’re looking forward to seeing what they’ll be wearing this season.

* There was a minor upset in Miami as incumbent secretary-treasurer Fedrick C. Ingram defeated incumbent vice president Artie Leichner for the presidency of United Teachers of Dade. The Miami Herald story inaccurately states UTD has 34,000 members, which instead is the number of people in the bargaining unit. There is no agency fee in Florida. UTD has 14,500 members, of whom 7,600 cast a vote in the election, which is a pretty high turnout for a union election.

* Votes will be tabulated this weekend for the presidency of the Buffalo Teachers Federation, where Phil Rumore has been president for 32 years. His opponent, Marc Bruno,  was six when Rumore first won.