AP classes: Good or Bad?

I took a bunch of AP classes in high school, in the late 60s, but never took the exams because they were sent surface mail (to Colombia) and arrived after the required date. My kids have taken AP classes...I've never thought much about it. Today's online Atlantic has AP Classes Are a Scam - John Tierney - The Atlantic

My beef with AP courses isn't novel. The program has a bountiful supply of critics, many of them in the popular press (see here and here), and many increasingly coming from academia as well (see here). The criticisms comport, in every particular, with my own experience of having taught an AP American Government and Politics course for ten years.... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
To me, the most serious count against Advanced Placement courses is that the AP curriculum leads to rigid stultification -- a kind of mindless genuflection to a prescribed plan of study that squelches creativity and free inquiry. The courses cover too much material and do so too quickly and superficially. In short, AP courses are a forced march through a preordained subject, leaving no time for a high-school teacher to take her or his students down some path of mutual interest. The AP classroom is where intellectual curiosity goes to die.

I don't know how much of that I believe, but it could be important.
Or then again, maybe not.