Some schools (like ours) do not provide an honors level of classes between “regular” and “AP.” Our school only offers honor classes for math prior to calculus and English prior to 11th grade. There are no honors classes for science or history.
The AP class can be taken instead of the regular class (not necessarily after). So, kids who aren’t the type that really need the extra challenge are still forced to decide between regular classes where the teachers are told to assign no homework that can’t be done in class (yes, really) and high-workload AP classes. This is because of some plan by the district to make the upper-level classes more integrated and equitable, but it has had the opposite effect. Kids who don’t need all that challenge still end up with ~8 APs just to avoid taking the low-level classes.