Edwin, please ask to see a "previous syllabus" or "grade scheme" for the AP courses he's looking at, too.
That will be a glimpse at how crushing the workload is in those courses. What we found was that AP moved faster (good), but that it wasn't necessarily taught at a level that was deeper/harder intellectually (neutral, I suppose), but that there was a brutal increase in the volume of work expected out of the students in those courses. So sure, they were still doing one page essays-- but four a week, rather than the one in "honors" or the one every two weeks in "regular" English. Does that make sense?
DD really didn't learn to work smarter in those AP courses, but at least the pace didn't allow for procrastination (good)-- then again, I don't think they were great college prep, either, since they weren't really at that level. The work was definitely still secondary level in my opinion-- there was just twice as much of it.
