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For Ontario students, EQAO stands for those pesky tests they have to write every few years up until Grade 10.

For teachers it’s a job requirement, one some consider valuable for the in-depth data they get about their students, and others see as a joy-killing, even dangerous, waste of precious time and money.

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Parents, if they know the acronym, may still have only a fuzzy grasp of what it’s all about.

Now 17 years old and with a $32-million budget, Ontario’s provincial student testing agency is hoping to make EQAO — the Education Quality and Accountability Office — more of a household name. It also wants people to think of more than just nail-biter tests when they hear it, such as that it represents a goldmine of data that can help answer an array of questions about how students are faring in school, what’s working and where they’re held back.

Would people know what it is that EQAO is about?

“If I was to place an EQAO poster on a subway or a bus would people that step on it know what it is that EQAO is about?” says Bruce Rodrigues, who became the agency’s third CEO last July and is planning to start up community consultations and an online survey within a month to help develop the agency’s “relevance” and find out what else education insiders and the general public think his office could help with. That might include finding ways to better respond to aboriginal communities’ needs, or what businesses might want to know about Ontario’s student achievement standards.