Sophmore crap are just alternate names nobody uses so I don't get why people are tripped up about it.
Actually, I have never heard another student use the number name of a grade, instead always using Freshmen (9), Sophomores (10), Juniors (11), and Seniors (12) as the primary classification. Maybe it's just a western-USA-rural-town thing.
Americans schools are further complicated by the fact that there's no national system of standardization in curriculum.
Within 2 years, every high school in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska will comply with the same standards, I know that. Other states are in there too. Most of them, in fact. We're actually working really hard to catch our high schools up with the rest of the world.
It's better than changing the curriculum, grading and exam system every two years like they do here.
This is how we're doing it. When I was a freshman, I took Integrated I. That's roughly equal to Algebra I, and it was mainly about algebra with a little bit of geometry thrown in for good measure. Starting next year, the freshmen at my high school will be required to know most of what I was taught last year in Geometry, Integrated III, and Pre-Calculus. I'm a Junior this year and taking Calculus, which is something that kind of scared the administration. However, myself and the junior-who-is-my-best-friend (the one with the cluster headaches) are proving to the (incredibly doubtful) administration that it's possible for high school students to learn that much math. The curriculum for math, at least, is shifting upwards about three and a half years, and the transition is only supposed to take four. There will be changes.