In Brooklyn, brilliance is everywhere, but opportunity is not. It’s in the student who stays after class to ask deeper questions. The one balancing school with family responsibilities and still showing up ready to learn. The one with big ideas—but limited exposure to what’s possible beyond their immediate surroundings.
What’s often missing isn’t talent. It’s access.
Nationally, first-generation college students account for roughly one-third of undergraduates, yet they continue to face significant barriers to enrollment, persistence, and degree completion. Those barriers are often compounded by income, geography, and access to social capital.
Brooklyn reflects this reality. Nearly one in five Brooklyn residents (19.2%) live below the federal poverty line, according to recent Census data—well above the statewide poverty rate. And among Brooklyn children, the challenge is even more pronounced, with child poverty rates remaining significantly elevated, according to NYU Furman Center data.
These disparities shape everything from housing stability to access to enrichment, mentorship, and college preparation.
The effects are visible in educational outcomes, too. Only 37.5% of Brooklyn adults age 25 and older hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to U.S. Census data—highlighting how access to higher education remains uneven and often generational. For many young people, where they grow up continues to shape what opportunities they can access.
Students in under-resourced communities often have fewer connections to mentors, college counselors, professional networks, and career exposure opportunities that can help transform potential into achievement.
We see the impact of access every day through our work with students and families. Since its inception, the Shawn Carter Foundation has awarded more than 2,700 scholarships to students across the country, helping young people overcome financial barriers to higher education.
Today, 71% of SCF scholars identify as first-generation college students, 83% come from single-parent households, and 64% come from households earning $40,000 or less annually. These numbers don’t speak to a lack of talent—they speak to the barriers too many students must overcome simply to access opportunity.
Across Brooklyn and communities like it, young people demonstrate extraordinary potential every day. Yet too many lack consistent access to the resources, networks, and opportunities that help translate that potential into long-term success.
While we often talk about closing achievement gaps, the more urgent issue is closing the access gap—one that shapes outcomes long before a student applies to college or enters the workforce.
As a Brooklyn native and as a founding board member of the Shawn Carter Foundation, we have seen this reality from complementary perspectives—one in the classroom and one through more than two decades of expanding educational opportunity. We see students who are curious, driven, and capable, yet many have limited exposure to career pathways, professional networks, and even college environments.
Without that visibility, it becomes harder to imagine what’s possible—let alone pursue it.
We've seen what can happen when access meets potential. For James, an educator at Achievement First Bushwick Middle School, that experience is deeply personal. Through scholarships, mentorship, and college readiness support from the Shawn Carter Foundation, he was able to navigate spaces that once felt out of reach. Just as importantly, he gained the confidence to see himself in those spaces—and to belong and lead there. His experience is one example of a larger truth: access doesn't create talent—it unlocks it.
In New York City, the broader structural challenges remain. Students in under-resourced neighborhoods often attend schools with fewer college counselors, limited career exposure programs, and less access to internships or enrichment opportunities.
According to New York City Department of Education data, college readiness rates continue to vary significantly across school districts—underscoring how geography still shapes opportunity.
That’s why closing the access gap requires more than isolated programs. It demands a coordinated, community-led approach.
In Brooklyn, that means investing in early and consistent exposure—college visits, career-connected learning, mentorship, and partnerships between schools and local industries. It means expanding career and technical education pathways that align with today’s workforce. And it means ensuring that students aren’t left to navigate these systems alone.
We’ve seen what happens when this ecosystem works: Students who once questioned whether college was an option go on to earn degrees.
Young people without professional networks build careers across industries.
This is how generational change happens. Not by questioning whether young people have potential, but by ensuring they have access to prove it.
Imagine a city where every student—regardless of zip code—has access to mentorship, internships, and clear pathways to college and careers. Where exposure is not accidental, but embedded into the educational experience. Where potential is not left unrealized simply because opportunity never arrived. Our young people need access.
Because when access expands, potential follows.
And when potential is fully realized, entire communities rise with it.
James Means is a Brooklyn native, educator at Achievement First Bushwick Middle School, and alumnus of the Shawn Carter Foundation. His work focuses on expanding access to opportunity for students in historically under-resourced communities.
Carolyn Archer is a founding board member and Board Secretary of the Shawn Carter Foundation. For more than 20 years, she has helped guide the foundation’s efforts to remove barriers to educational attainment and expand opportunities for young people from underserved communities.
