According to Claudia Goldin, the states that led in the U.S. high school movement (e.g., Iowa and Nebraska) had a cohesive, homogeneous population and were more affluent, with a broad middle-class group.
[citation needed] Secondary schools in America were free and generally accessible, while in most of Europe they were costly and often inaccessible with difficult entrance exams.
Because decentralized decision-making systems increased competition among districts for residents in the United States, the U.S. initially moved quickly in building schools.
Further, high school was designed to be the terminal degree rather than a pre-college diploma of office or skilled blue-collar workers in the United States.
[6] The increase in educational attainment was not shared by the African American population, whose high school enrollment rates were very low, especially in the South.
[6] Within some of the larger American cities, especially in the industrial North, high school enrollment rates were initially lower than the rest of the country.
This has been attributed by some to the widening of economic inequality since 1970, and the slowdown in the growth of educational attainment has been most extreme for those at the bottom of the income distribution, particularly for ethnic and racial minorities.