It's just hard I imagine, for government to really have a list of good prompts when you are never allowed to re-use a topic. Also, you have to remember that the test needs to remove cultural imbalances... if it's say "Who is faster: Superman or The Flash?" as a physics exam question (btw, the answer is The Flash, and it's proven with mathematics and physics.) well you just screwed at least most immigrant students =P
School is something everyone attending and writing the ACT can relay to equally, so that's why they always do something as uninteresting as that.
I think extra credit is undesirable in your situation because:
a) why wasn't the student with abundance effort able to do well on the "normal" assignments to begin with? what did the teacher do wrong in the first place to require a new assignment to 'make up for it'?
b) if said extra assignment is so well designed that students love it, why isn't it a mandatory normal assignment?
Basically, if it's poorly made, then it only benefits the students who are already excelling and you got mark inflation. If it's well made, why isn't it a mandatory normal assignment so everyone benefits? No matter how it turns out, either the extra credit should be made mandatory and 'normal' or it should be purged.
As for your opinion with potential ignorance, let's just say that you spoke my mind~ Why is there a NATIONAL party whose goal is to separate from the country, and only got representatives in this particular area yet they get to represent the entire country... like, what?
Japanese like a nerd: actually I consider myself a geek, and I play a lot of games from Japan, and I watch anime though not as much as I used to, but never for a second do I want or tried to learn Japanese... Always considered Otaku's Holy Land to be a place I'll love to visit with a tour, yet it's a place I'll never travel to by myself without a tour guide, and I will definitely never live there.
EDIT: anddddd mandatory XD at the end of posts!f XD