One idea that occurs to me about pacing is that college students usually take a load of four full-credit courses per semester. High school students may have 6 or 7 classes. Given that some of these kids may be taking 3 or 4 AP classes at one time, plus all those other classes, it honestly doesn't seem reasonable to me to expect the classes to move at the pace of a real college class.
As an example, the high school people here have told us that dual enrollment kids here get three times the credits for real college classes. This seems to be saying, "We know it's a lot more work, so you don't have to take as many classes at the high school." I took AP classes in the early 80s when those classes were a lot closer to college-level. The workload per course was nothing compared to what I had as a college freshman.
And for full disclosure, I think that AP classes have become something of a racket in many ways.
