I see that Neal McCluskey at Cato's blog is using Indianapolis data to take a shot at Kevin Carey on whether a new teacher's typical student debt is affordable. My first thought was whether I could file a grievance, because, hey, taking shots at Kevin is our work!  Then I looked at the substance of it.  The particular data parsing matters a bit here, and one's perspective on the meaning of the word affordable matters a lot, but Carey has the better of this issue.

In the latest edition of the venerable AFT salary survey we use data from the  Project on Student Debt, the beginning salaries in the 50 largest cities and some estimated tax data from Citizens for Tax Justice to estimate the hit that student loan costs take from new teachers in these cities. On average, we found loan costs in Indianapolis are 7 percent of income for new teachers.  Can one afford it? Strictly speaking, teachers take these jobs and they pay their debts. So yes. But as I suspect Carey was saying, that doesn't make it comfortable for them or good policy for us.  Our goal should be to make people want to come into teaching, not to make new teachers feel bitter and even more stressed. 

McCluskey's use of Indianapolis colors his interpretation a little bit. It has a somewhat below average ratio of beginning teacher salary to rent.  And, yes you can get an apartment for $600, but the median rent in 2005 was a bit higher. Oddly, the libertarian guy's decision not to calculate taxes as an expense might explain his interpretation. Indiana has a standard issue regressive state tax system that hits beginning teachers twice as hard as it would various board members of the Cato Institute. When you combine it with federal taxes to look at net income, a beginning teacher is spending 1 dollar in 10 out of pocket on student loans.    

I can imagine what a Cato Institute solution to this problem would look like, but I'm not in the mood for the resulting Medicaid cuts today. Instead, on taxes, I'll agree with my friends at CTJ that we should be doing more to make Indiana taxes progressive rather than playing political games. We should also be working on college affordability issues generally and in particular advocating for various ideas to make the profession welcoming to new teachers.

Afterthought: If you wanted lock step opposition to property tax cuts in Indiana as opposed to criticism of silly ones, look elsewhere. I'll have more blogging on taxes later this week. Double Afterthought: After reading this, I was tempted to just scrap this post. Instead it stands as proof that even an annoying squirrel can find a nut every once in a while.

Update: Sara Mead makes a good point about the additional cost of paying for Master's Degrees, which are often a legal requirement.  I suspect in some cases this actually allows teachers to push the total reckoning a bit further forward, but it deeply adds to the bill. And Kevin Carey defends himself and raises an interesting meta point about the blogosphere.