Frederick Bramante

Today’s Daily Point of Light Award winner, Fred Bramante, had a difficult time in school, but didn’t let his scholastic experience get in the way of his eventual success. A former middle school science teacher, Bramante had a vision to revolutionize education in America by allowing students to earn school credits anytime and anyplace.

A quarter of American high school students drop out before graduation. So Bramante asked, “What if the problem isn’t teachers or schools, but how we measure learning itself—as “seat time” spent in a class?” Says Bramante, “School taught me that I wasn’t very bright. Life taught me that school was wrong.”

In 1972, after leaving his teaching job, and with $600 in his pocket, Bramante opened the first Daddy’s Junky Music in New Hampshire, which grew from a hole-in-the-wall shop into a $35,000,000 music retail business.
In 2003, the governor of New Hampshire asked Bramante to become chairman of the State Board of Education. This was the opportunity Bramante needed to combine his experiences as a teacher and an entrepreneur to help revitalize education.

In 2013, Bramante founded the National Center for Competency-Based Learning (NCCBL), a nonprofit that works to institutionalize real world, hands on, learning opportunities for students by serving as the prime catalyst in harnessing mentors at the local, state and national levels. The NCCBL works to transform public education from a system anchored in time and place, typically a traditional academic year with all classes in a school building, to a competency-based system that is “anytime, anyplace, any how and any pace.”

Through his organization, Bramante is giving students the opportunity to learn how and when they want. Says Bramante, “why would anyone drop out of school?”
Do you know someone who is helping making their community a better place? Nominate them for a Daily Point of Light Award today!