Data and education are closely linked indeed. Grades, information about the students, trends, everything almost is data in education should it be quantitative or qualitative. Therefore over the past decade many have been trying to use innovative technology to improve educational systems.
That was the case of InBloom, an open source and non-profit technological organization backed by the Gates Foundation which wanted to help schools and school districts to better manage their data. Only they didn’t count on parents and teachers protest around privacy issues and they closed 2 years after starting their project. A shame for the educational sector but maybe an opportunity for other models to shine?!
Here is a good article from The Economist about it:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2014/04/big-data-and-education