I think it's a natural consequence of AP-for-all, myself. Most 14-16yo teens have no real business tackling college level material.
But if you do it SLOWLY enough, with enough scaffolding and repetition, I suppose you can make most of them look up to the task at a superficial and very basic level of proficiency.
Which is what AP is these days, mostly.
As long as those things are more or less "optional" for students, then the program can still work for the original target population (which is much closer to the kids represented by this board's membership), but otherwise, this is about the wrong approach and the wrong group.
Sure, both things can nominally get the job* done, I suppose... but it's a little like trying to herd sheep using a group of combines rather than a pair of border collies.
* assuming for the moment that the job, here, is to learn {subject} which for many AP students is not the actual goal. For many of them, the coursework is actually nothing more than a year of test preparation.
