Having lived in Indiana for most of my life, and knowing folks who are teachers there still, I can vouch for the first statement.

Not so much the second though -- yes, these high salaries are in HCOL areas, but I'm not aware of crazy amount of competition to be a teacher even with those salaries. I'm now in Chicago, where teachers fresh out of college fetch about $60k in my district, and there's always plenty of openings.