Voters will have the opportunity to make Massachusetts’ education system more equitable for all students. By voting YES on question 2, we can eliminate the restricted programs created by the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) graduation requirement.

The English portion of the MCAS primarily tests reading comprehension on short passages, usually the length of an article you would find in a magazine. Go to the DESE website to see sample questions. You will be hard pressed to find grammar questions. Grammar is at least mentioned in the instructions for the short written statement. I say short because it is a maximum of two handwritten pages (on the paper version of the exam). Two pages of writing does not qualify as deep thinking, especially when some students write much more than others.

In my three decades of teaching, I have witnessed the slow death of the novel. Forgive me for sounding old, but “back in my day” we read 10 novels a year at Boston Latin Academy. We read a novel for term from what we called “inner reading”, meaning the teacher guided us through the Shakespearean novel or play. We also had “outside reading”, which was a novel or play we read on our own, such as John Steinbeck’s The Pearl or Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, and then we were quizzed on at our reading. Rose Horowitch recently published an article in The Atlantic in which she writes that elite students have a hard time reading novels. “To read a book in college, it helps to have read a book in high school.”

Novels aren’t in the MCAS, so schools don’t emphasize them. Don’t let anyone fool you, schools are definitely “teaching to the test” because schools and districts are judged by MCAS scores. In my view, students are less prepared for college today as a result of relying on the MCAS for their English proficiency.

Here’s what I mean: I teach Latin. Before the MCAS, I could assume my students knew English grammar. Today I know not.

Latin nouns have five main cases (seven for you scholars). Today, when I ask my students “What is the dative case used for?” I get the standard response “It is used for the indirect object”. However, when I follow up with “And what is an indirect object?”; the usual answer is “I don’t know”. Students don’t know because schools have generally stopped teaching grammar.

Oh, someone in central administration might say that grammar is ‘woven’ or ‘taught in mini-lessons’. What this means is that grammar is not stressed.

And readers: “Why not focus on English grammar?”

Because the MCAS doesn’t emphasize grammar.

For those who argue that there needs to be some kind of system to ensure that high school diplomas mean something, rest assured that I hear you. Let’s make sure ALL degrees mean something.

I propose that all schools in Massachusetts be required to administer the MCAS. All schools – public, charter, private and parochial – must comply with Massachusetts building codes and fire codes, so why not education codes? As it stands now, students enrolled in private schools are essentially working their way out of the MCAS. An affirmative vote on question 2 eliminates this amendment.

Additionally, the C in the MCAS nominally stands for comprehensive. How comprehensive can this test be when it leaves out so much of what makes a child a good student? Where is the measure of tenacity, kindness or creativity? Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences says that we humans have eight different ways of manifesting our intelligence. Eight.

The MCAS does not come close to fully encompassing a student’s knowledge or skills. It’s like judging a fish by its ability to climb a tree.

Seven years ago, in this newspaper, we wryly proposed expanding the MCAS to include language proficiency. The idea was for monolingual suburban students to master a foreign language in a few years, in the same way that many urban immigrant students must master English. On a serious note, being multilingual is a better career skill than scoring proficient on the MCAS. Once again, MCAS narrows the curriculum.

The same narrowing occurs in the sciences. Sung-Joon Pai, a former teacher at Fenway High School and Boston Arts Academy, laments the lack of creativity in today’s schools. In both of his schools, science classes were themselves combined and/or integrated with the arts so that students studied subjects from all angles.

As he noted in a Facebook post: “(That) was learning! Then came the science MCAS and we were forced to separate our courses into the traditional subjects and make sure our students were prepared for the subjects selected by the test takers.”

Please vote Yes on question 2 so that schools no longer have to respond to just one measure of success.

Michael Maguire teaches Latin at the Boston Latin Academy and serves on the Executive Committee of the Boston Teachers Union. The ideas expressed here are his own.