In this, my inaugural issue as editor of Urban Education, I have invited researchers to write about some of the pressing challenges that the field of urban education faces in maximizing student learning opportunities in urban environments. The invited authors were charged with providing what I hope will be new and expanded perspectives that help us as educational researchers, policy makers, practitioners, and theoreticians improve our work in urban education. Building from Warren Buttton and Kofi Lomotey's courageous leadership and the foundation that they established, respectively, as the first two editors of the journal, I am committed to ensuring that Urban Education be a vehicle of knowledge construction and deconstruction that transforms research, theory, policy, and practice in ways that improve the human condition-especially the human condition in urban and highly diverse environments. I realize there are significant problems in some urban schools and urban locations outside of schools; the reality is that there are significant problems in education, issues that transcend geography. These problems emerge in a range of social contexts: suburban and rural included. However, the pressing question from my perspective as the new editor of this important journal to the field of education is as follows: In what ways can we build knowledge to address and improve problems that have real consequences for people who occupy urban social contexts? Writing journal articles without explicit attention and commitment to making life chances better for real people seems insignificant, irrelevant, and useless. Thus, I charge contributors to the knowledge construction of urban education to conduct their research as well as theoretical, practical, and policy exercises and analyses with the head and heart. In this way, it takes courage to care about people we may not have ever met (or may not ever meet) or whose voices may never be heard. As Brazilian critical theorist Paulo Freire (1998) explained, those of us who have some power to influence change and social justice must speak on behalf of those who may not have a seat at the decision making table. Designing research studies that empower and work with communities to improve them are at the core of what I'm calling transformative knowledge construction.