To address the issue of pre-service teachers being under-prepared for work in multicultural and impoverished environments in America's urban schools, teacher education programs have taken steps to improve diversity-oriented curricula and provide relevant fieldwork experience. However, research indicates that a large proportion of teacher candidates still do not have the necessary skills to deal with students from divergent upbringings. This interpretive study investigated the beliefs of pre-service teachers about urban students and how well their teacher education programs are addressing the issues of working in inner-city schools. The results revealed that, although some progress has been made, a significant gap remains between the need to prepare teachers for work in urban schools and the reality that many teacher education programs fall short of this goal. The authors concluded that further research is necessary to pinpoint the failings of teacher education programs in training future teachers for work in diverse settings. [This report is published in "The Journal of Multiculturalism in Education" v8 Oct 2012.]