Giving Compass' Take:

• The Los Angeles Unified School District pledged to make sure all students graduate and are college ready by 2023 by focusing on complete improvement of lower-performing schools in the district.

• How does this model differ from others that districts have tried in the past?

• Read about the restorative justice practices that Los Angeles schools are investing in to help improve disciplinary policies.

The Los Angeles Unified School District made a big commitment recently: by 2023 all students will be college-ready, and — to make sure parents can hold them accountable — the district will now report two different graduation rates.

Through unanimous approval of the “Realizing the Promise for All: Close the Gap by 2023” resolution, the board members “publicly commit” to students — including English learners, special education students, foster youth, and those living in poverty — to provide the support they need to graduate eligible to apply to a state four-year university.

The resolution also directs the district to develop tougher school site improvement plans and exempt the principals of the lowest-performing schools from having to hire off the district’s “must-place” teachers list.

The difference is what grade students received in a set of college-prep classes called A-G courses, which all students are required to take in order to graduate. Students who pass those classes with D’s are still eligible to graduate, but they need a C or better in those classes to be able to apply to the University of California or Cal State schools.

Last year, only 53 percent of Latino students, 28 percent of foster youth, and 22 percent of English learner graduates were college-eligible, according to United Way of Greater Los Angeles’s CLASS Coalition, whose members spoke at Tuesday’s board meeting, joining dozens of parents and education advocates who rallied outside district headquarters to support the “Close the Gap” resolution.

“This resolution is just the beginning. LA Unified has to make changes and do things differently in order to make progress in these areas,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said. His office will have to draft a plan on how to reach those goals within 180 days.

Read the full article about improving high school graduation rates by Esmeralda Fabian Romero at The 74