I can tell you what isn’t successful: when a school treats these classes as somewhat interchangeable. For whatever reason, kid’s school has dismal success in physics AP scores for many years, despite great success in most other subjects. I always wondered why: I found that class and test easy (way back when it was just AP physics) and the kind of thing that would lend itself to self-teaching if the teacher is bad.
So when it was my kids turn, I found out the level of dysfunction: She was a physics 1 student. She was assigned to a physics C classroom and was taught the same materials (lectures and classes) but took a slightly different test (without the calc: probably would have been fine for her to take the calc). Tests had some crazy curve so that her scores in the class would be similarly high whether she understood the material or felt somewhat confused. She (and most of the physics C students) all did various shades of poorly on the test. When she got to the test she said the formula sheet wasn’t even the one she was given during the year! Now I understood why so many of the bright students at her school just did honors physics and called it a day. Mine skipped honors, but many in the class (who did no better) had a full year of honors before the AP class.