Yes! I would much rather have several exams a semester, and problem sets, than everything riding on one AP exam.
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Easy to get Cs in college courses. It is also true that placing out of the same course is easier with an AP than a DE. Especially if you are aiming for a private college. Also, if you are taking DEs, who is going to write effusive reccs for you?
If you want a BA/BS in a cost effective manner from the local college though, the DEs may make sense.
Another note of caution that you donāt have to disclose AP scores when applying to colleges in case you bomb the test, but you do have to report the DE grades and provide the transcript.
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I would disagree. My D23 would much rather take a DE than an AP exam. She has loved the DE classes sheās taken and has learned so much. The learning motivates her, rather than stresses her out. She also likes the process of writing college-length papers and digging into ideas.
She despises high stakes and/or standardized testing - it completely stresses her out and she finds the process miserable - and absolutely refuses to do it.
To each their own.
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I am 100% agree. In my opinion, the whole idea that one exam that can pull info from anywhere in the course (and you can only hope that your teacher covered it sufficiently) determine your knowledge and work of the whole year is insane. This was specifically a nightmare with COVID AP exams. Nobody knew for sure either format or what will be there. Those COVID AP exams destroyed the hard work of many kids in 2020 and 2021 with bad advice from teachers (like you do not need to complete everything, or write on paper and then upload.) After that experience, I banned AP exams in my house. (We have 3 kids close in age.)
I suggested some of my friends consider for their kids DE instead of AP. All who did were very grateful and regretted that they did not know about that option earlier. We have a very respectable CC in our area.
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However, if you have an A in the AP class and 2 on AP exam (and your all other AP exams were 4 and 5 before) that makes you wonder what is going on with above mentioned quality of teaching AP classes in HS or what was wrong with that AP examā¦ Been there too 
.
Oh, and when you have a class of magnet kids who ALL can not get 4 on AP Government, but magically have no problems with all other subjects you cannot blame your child for being lazyā¦ You want to get rid of that teacherā¦
By the way, you can to some extent control your schedule in CC (and choose teachers) and you absolutely cannot do in HS.
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IMO, an AP test is like a final exam in a college course. Can pull material from anywhere from the whole course, and potentially is the majority of the grade.
If a student gets a 2 in an AP course that just means they arenāt ready to skip the material in college, for whatever the reason (and been there done that with a new teacher who didnāt know what they were doing). Failing a DE course can follow the student into grad school depending on what they want to do.
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Agree. However, my assumption that students who enroll for DE credits are ready for them. I also assume that students who take AP classes are also ready for them and do not do it just to look great on paper for colleges.
The above examples with AP classes experience (both real life and not hypothetical) are examples of wasted time with AP classes of very smart students ready for college classes.
If I can see some value in repeating Physics or Chemistry, I can see 0 value in repeating American Government for the STEM student 
. Sorryā¦ (Note for OP. I hardly can imagine a public university that will not take American Government from another 4 year college! So this is a safe DE credit.)
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Your college professor can write you recs. DD got an excellent recommendation from her college professor. I bet it had more weight than the recommendation of HS teacher.
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As to whose recc has more weight depends on who has the chance to know the kid more ā not whether the person is a college professor or a congressman. Ideally the recommender should be able to comment about the kid regarding his academic as well as non-academic qualities. This is more possible for teachers in the high school than for college professors unless you make a significant effort to develop a relationship. In high school you may meet the teacher in other contexts more naturally ā maybe the teacher is also coaching a sport, maybe you help other kids in the class etc.
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Couple more points for some people who may read it later.
There are many reasons why kids may want to āskipā school. Some may have social issues in some small schools, and it may be much better to enroll with DE classes than to stay in toxic environmentā¦ There are maybe health issues that can be addressed with remote CC classes or students maybe involve in serious sports.
Not all people are the sameā¦
What is useful to keep in mind: colleges want ECs and community involvement.
You may fit or not fit with the environment in CC.
One of my kids did something very unusual that paid back. DD stayed both in HS and CC. She was leading a club in school, stayed connect with friends (by coming back to school during lunch) and did some EC outside of school.
More and more districts allow DE CC students participate in after school activities of the original HS. Do it if you are interested.
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Agree. And you can help other students in college too. 
And yes, if students work in groups and do labs in the class professor can see it too.
Our experience is very smooth with APs, and no one around here that I know of ever takes DEs. We are in NJ. Iāve heard of the occasional exceptional valedictorian of the Princeton High School taking very advanced math from Princeton with the hope of eventually matriculating into Princeton. But clearly this is not the category we are talking about here.
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Our district start to roll DE credits only in last 6 years. Originally HS admins terribly resisted the idea since they were losing funding. I had to fight (went all the way up to the principal) with school to allow my child to take DE art class in CC during COVID (instead of doing chorus or band over Zoom in high school.) Now local schools have many different paths for kids to take classes in local CC, and they are finally almost free this year (we still need to pay $300 in fees!). Kids can take 2 classes each semester in CC, or even enroll full-time in early years programs that are designed for HS students (classes are exclusively for HS student on college campus.)
In our district (maybe it applies to the whole state?), DE classes for high school students at community colleges are 100% free. So that is very nice. We are allowed to take up to 3 per semester (or 3 over summer), with the stipulation that you can NOT take a class through DE if it is offered by the high school.
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You should do whatever works for you, but I wouldnāt diss APs :-).
The school my son went to wanted to eliminate APs as has become fashionable at private schools these days :-). He went and met his old teachers when visiting home from college and talked them out of it. He said it is so comfortable to place out of courses at his college with APs than it is with DEs, IB or testing out. Basically if you had IB or DEs you have to test out, and he said it is non-trivially hard. I think in the entire batch the one guy who managed to test out of freshman physics was an IPho silver medalist. My son comfortably placed out freshman physics because he had 5s on AP Mech C and AP E&M C. In fact he winged his AP Mech exam his junior year in HS with no prep and got a 4. He found out his college lets him place out of all Phy and Chem if he had 5s on all the respective APs, so in the senior year of high school he made it a point to re-register for AP Mech, prepped for a week, so that he could get a clean 5. After that, he had no freshman requirements in college apart from a writing sem. This left an open palette in picking courses the first year. He could have graduated in 3 years if he wanted.
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I think our district rolled DE specifically for kids to be able to cut off the cost education and allow more kids to be exposed to real college with the hope that more kids will get eventually 2 or 4-year degrees. I very much like that approach given the ridiculous cost of education at this point in the US.
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I have never head about student being required to take exams to count DEs. That was not our experience. I think some schools that do not want to take DE credits may use that approach and suggest students to take an exam instead. That is totally different and I would not recommend it. I do not know anything about IBs (we have very limited number of schools with IBs in our district.)
My S23 is getting his AA with 8Aice, 7APās and 5 DE.
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At that point the DE has no relevance if you are testing out. If you are saying you do not recommend, I assume you mean you would recommend a different college. I guess in this case we had no choice. The kid wanted to go to this college.