This stat is largely meaningless without knowing the state. Salaries in certain parts of the U.S. are much higher than in Finland. The average salary in NYC is like 4x the average salary in Helsinki. Not sure why you’d expect the cost per student to be the same?
I believe it's higher than Finland on average, too, as well as in absolute terms in each state. NYC spends even more, for even worse education. You can easily the statistics, and once you do, you'll see that throwing even more money at this problem will only exacerbate it.
