In a recent study, the mothers of 268 children who were in classes for educable mentally retarded in two public school districts in Southern California were interviewed. The responses of some of these mothers dramatize three issues: (1) biases in the assessment procedures used to label children as mentally retarded; (2) the stigmatization associated with special class placement; and, (3) inadequate programming. Disproportionately large numbers of black and Chicano children are labeled as mentally retarded by the public schools. Public schools rely more on IQ test scores than any other community agency. The schools label more persons as mentally retarded, share their labels with more other organizations, and label more persons with IQ's above 70 and with no physical disabilities than any other formal organization in the community. Proportionately more low status persons and persons from minority ethnic groups were defined as comprehensively retarded as the cutoff level for subnormality was raised. Stigmatization was a major concern of parents interviewed. Of a group of 108 children followed for several years and classified as retarded, only one in five ever returned to the regular class. Thus, many parents were justified in seeing the program as a "sentence of death." (Author/JM)