Aja Settles

Aja Settles is an educator and literacy leader with more than 20 years of experience in teaching, curriculum development, school leadership, and coaching system-level education leaders. She has served as a founding lead teacher, instructional leader, instructional fellow, and elementary principal at North Star Academy’s West Side Park campus in Newark, New Jersey, a public charter school in the Uncommon Schools network. Settles holds a B.A. from Temple University and is certified as a Literacy Coordinator through Lesley University.

She is a co-author of Great Habits, Great Readers: A Practical Guide for K–4 Reading in the Light of Common Core, published by Jossey-Bass, which draws on practices from top elementary classrooms to provide strategies, systems, and lessons for effective K–4 reading instruction. In addition to her school-based leadership, Settles has led implementation work for research-aligned literacy programs, coaching senior district and system leaders such as Chief Academic Officers and Chief Executive Officers on improving literacy outcomes across school systems.