They do not go to the same schools. The school system is controlled nigh-exclusively by the states, to rather infamously mixed results. That Northern Californian kid is getting a world-class education. The kid in Georgia is almost certainly not.
Meanwhile, the US is wildly more diverse at the local level than Europe is, which leads to its own significant cultural differences. Up in Northern California, about a quarter of people are of Asian descent, predominantly Indian and Chinese. Another quarter is Latino. Southern California is half Latino. Jump across the country to the Midwest, you've got a lot more people of German descent, in the South you've got Black people making up a significant portion of the population. What the US lacks in local history, it makes up for in cultural admixture: all those diverse backgrounds end up stewing together in unique ways across the country, producing all sorts of unique cultures. Leads to some fantastic fusion foods: Spam wasubi, breakfast burritos, American pizza, soul food, Chinese-American cuisine. Sure we don't our own thousand years of rich fucks inbreeding over funny hats, but the wide spectrum of cultures across across the US draw from the histories of everywhere on the globe.
Compare that with, say, Germany. Germany is 70% ethnically German. Most US states aren't even that 'White', never mind breaking that down by individual countries of origin.