Teachers' unions are about protecting the employment rights of their dues-paying members!
The big-wig, excessively paid union leaders profess interest in "education." Their real interest is accumulating money and power to control a political agenda.
If Romney follows through with his campaign statements, and parents and concerned citizens will hold him to those statements, then perhaps good teachers will be rewarded at the local and state level for the excellent results they produce, and the NEA and AFT officials will find themselves expossed and sidelined in the process.
And, by the way, as someone long ago observed something to the effect that, "teaching and learning are so entertwined that one cannot claim that one happens without the other."