Many teacher education programs in the United States (US) face increasing demands to better prepare teachers for entry into and retention in urban schools. Through a US Department of Education grant, a university-school partnership was formed to develop a community-based model of teacher preparation that placed pre-service teachers in urban schools for a full year. Based on questionnaires and interviews with university teacher education faculty, and both pre-service and novice classroom teachers who took their first jobs in urban schools, this research considers the common concerns and disparate roles that the three groups considered paramount in preparing new teachers for urban schools.