Gentle teaching, empowering children growing up amid poverty and violence, is the only alternative to ineffective coercive teaching. "Decent" teachers are not judgmental, moralistic, or easily shocked; they listen, recognize their biases, are culturally competent, and do not seek to fulfill power needs. (SK)

"Star" urban teachers are driven by the desire to develop good people. Their undergirding ideology is high expectations for low-income students, and they see their role as fundamentally different from that of other teachers. (SK)

Minorities educated in urban school systems are unlikely to select themselves into teacher training programs. This article shows the direct connection among societal conditions, the quality of schooling offered minority children, and minority teacher recruitment. Suggestions for developing alternative certification and recruitment approaches are…

In discussing the problem of a current and future shortage of well-qualified minority teachers, it is pointed out that this shortage is only one manifestation of the enormous systemic failure of urban schools; minority children and youth are receiving an inferior education in inadequate elementary and secondary schools. New reform efforts aimed at…

Proposes 12 teacher attributes that are important in multicultural schools, focusing on specific teacher qualities and ideology and explaining that selecting teachers who are predisposed to perform the sophisticated expectations of multicultural teaching is a necessary precondition. Training has important value after preselection, providing it…

This monograph reviews literature on, and presents recommendations for, recruiting and selecting students who will train to become teachers for urban schools. Studies show that urban patterns of poverty, early parenthood, and other social ills make urban school children at high risk for academic failure. There is a critical shortage of teachers in…