The thing is-- there is already an appropriate class for such students (those for whom AP is a real "reach").
Those are called "honors" or "college prep" classes.
Part of the problem may be that Advanced Placement exams are relatively well-known while SAT Subject tests, which could be used to assess non-AP courses, are obscure. If a good physics course could raise the SAT Physics Subject test scores of its students from say 300 to 600 (the scale is 200 to 800, the same as for SAT Reasoning), this would not qualify them for college credit, but it probably would raise the chance that pre-med and nursing students pass the non-calculus-based physics courses they need get into medical or nursing school. This likely helps them more than getting 1's (the lowest score) on AP Physics B.
