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Measuring Opportunity: The Equity Ratio The conceptualization and measurement of educational adequacy has been a process that has engaged scholars for nearly three decades. The term came to be associated with “third wave” class action suits wherein plaintiffs brought suit against their respective states claiming that inadequate funding for education was unconstitutional and resulted in inequitable learning opportunities for children in property poor communities. Scholars have argued that the ‘benchmark’ of a finance system should be whether that system provides adequate resources so that schools and districts can deploy strategies to help all students learn. Despite repeated calls for changes to state funding models, many states continue to rely on a foundation program to fund public education; these models have been described as inadequate to meet the demands of educating all children to mandated levels of proficiency. This misalignment of resources to intended outcomes of schooling have led to calls reform in order to provide equal and adequate educational opportunity. The equity and adequacy of finance policies has historically been measured separately from that of student achievement. Knoeppel proposes an equity ratio that utilizes measures of dispersion of student performance and finance to measure opportunity.