Story highlights Chicago to require high school students have a plan after graduation

Initiative takes effect in 2020, but critics aren't convinced it will work

(CNN) A product of Chicago's South Side, DeAvion Gillarm will be the first in his family to attend college.

"I always had a plan," said Gillarm, a Morgan Park High School graduate headed to Lincoln College next month. "You're not going to be successful without a plan."

Under a controversial new requirement, starting in 2020, students hoping to graduate from a public high school in Chicago must provide evidence they, too, have a plan for the future: either acceptance to college or a gap-year program, a trade apprenticeship, military enlistment or a job offer.

"It will help students think about what they want to do next in life," said Gillarm, who wants to study exercise science in college.

But not everyone is sold on a plan that Mayor Rahm Emanuel said will steer every graduating senior in the nation's third-largest school system on "a path toward a successful life."

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