This paper examines the practice of successful urban teachers, exploring the validity of National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) and Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) urban teacher assessments. Results from a literature review and empirical evidence indicate that successful teaching occurs when teachers and students share background and cultural experiences. Teachers who understand students' cultural attributes more readily link classroom content with student experience. Successful teachers emphasize the whole child and know their students' cultural norms. Culturally relevant teachers make demands for academic success for all students rather than making assumptions about at-risk students. They work deliberately to blur the borders between themselves and their students and help students develop counter knowledge that challenges the status quo. The NBPTS adopted a model of assessment that includes both portfolio and assessment center exercises. Currently, characteristics outlined in this paper are not well represented in NBPTS Early Adolescent/English Language Arts assessment. NBPTS assessments have been found to have an adverse impact with respect to race. In the case of INTASC, the use of assessment is quite limited, and the number of urban teachers taking the assessment has not been made available to researchers. (Contains 29 references.) (SM)