Yes-- no two ways about it, AP courses are by far the best- designed, and largely the best-implemented courses that my DD has had in her school career.
I don't think they're all well-organized. My eldest enrolled in AP US History through CTY at Hopkins last year, and he dropped it like a hot potato two weeks later. It was 95% based on memorization of factoids assessed through online multiple choice tests. The other 5% of the grade was based on "essays" that had to be written in 40 minutes or less (practice for timed AP exam essays). Instructor time was minimal and was limited to an online chat session once a week or so for an hour or less. Everything came from a canned course CTY had licensed in from some company somewhere, and on top of the $1300 course fee, you had to pay $100 to get access to the course materials. I don't know why people stay in those courses. CTY provides absolutely NOTHING. I wrote to them to complain about it, and they answered by saying that "Our instructors are so great and blah blah blah" and then told me they were looking into licensing in even MORE courses.
That said, the homegrown CTY courses DS took were outstanding. By this, I mean the courses that someone had developed just for CTY (e.g. Crafting the Essay) and/or courses that seemed to be taught only there (e.g. Forensics). There was real interaction with an instructor and meaningful feedback on assignments in those courses.
