This paper provides three case studies of initiatives developed to improve educational opportunities in vulnerable urban communities. The cities in the three countries involved, Australia, the United States, and Spain, are different in many ways; however, each has persistent and entrenched inequalities between the educational opportunities and outcomes of historically marginalised students and their mainstream counterparts. Here, we focus on conceptualising and describing urban examples of poverty from three different countries, and reporting on programs and strategies aimed at enhancing the quality of teaching in schools in high-poverty areas. By providing and comparing the three cases, we aim to contribute to broader understandings of poverty in three locations and how teachers and schools in high-poverty urban settings can re-think their practices.