Black students in Montgomery County schools’ special education programs are two and a half times as likely as their peers to be labeled as mentally retarded, and nearly twice as likely to be labeled with an emotional disturbance, according to 2006 figures collected by the Montgomery County Council.

In a district where black students make up 23 percent of the nearly 140,000-member student body, black children represent 40 percent of the cases of emotional disturbance and 42 percent of mental retardation cases.