We have high school and middle school, but no low school.

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Apparently "low school" doesn't sound good, so we call it "elementary school" or "grade school".

From where I live...
We didn't had 2 extra school years until about 7 or so years ago.

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And then there's kindergarten...

There are so many school stages in America; preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle school, high school, grade school, freshman, college....

In (most of) the UK it's just simple. Preschool is 2-4-year-olds, primary school is 5-11-year-olds, comprehensive (or high) school is 11-16-year-olds, sixth form is an optional year or two for 16-18-year-olds, and college is also optional. In fact you don't even need to ''graduate'' high school in the UK. You just do your GCSE exams at the end of year 11 (when you're 15 or 16), then if you fail you still graduated, and college or sixth form can even take you on if you got poor grades.

In swedish, the 9 years of primary schools are divided into "low stage" (grades 1-3), "middle stage" (4-6) and "high stage" (7-9). Onto secondary schoold (what we'd call Gymnasium) it's again divided into 3 grades.

A sophomore in high school in the US is in the 10th grade. He/she is in their second year of high school in the vast majority of cases.

A sophomore is a first-year high school student if the student graduated from junior high in the 9th grade. Usually, though, a 9th grade student is a freshman in high school.

We have sophomores in college, too. They are 2nd year students out of 4 years of conventional college attendance. Or students who have between 31 and 60 credits within most degree programs.

I can't understand why they changed "elementary school" to "grade school" and "junior high school" to "middle school" while high school is still just high school. Is it because grade school and middle school are just easier to say and spell? Or is it to make people in their 40's like myself feel like they're 400 years old?

Here we have barneskole (literally children's school; elementary/primary school; 6 years), ungdomsskole ( literally youth school,formerly known as middelskole; junior high; 3 years), and videregående (literally onward-going, formerly known as gymnas; high school. Different lengths depending on whether vocational or ordinary, but 2-3 years. In vocational school often just 2 and the apprenticeship, but you still need a final year to be done with high school diploma).

When I went to school it was 9 years of compulsory school, now it's 10. We used to begin school at age 7, now it's 6.

A lot of (most probably) small kids go to barnehage (daycare).
While the 6-year olds (5 now I guess) in some daycares at least had something called førskole (preschool), it has never been part of the educational system the way it is in the US. It was as boring as school though.