It Takes a District: How School District Policy Shapes School Contexts, Stakeholder Perceptions, and Student Outcomes

School districts play a critical but often overlooked role in establishing policies that affect schools and students. This dissertation uses rich longitudinal data from New York City (NYC) to explore three different areas of district policy: school accountability, field trips, and student mobility.;First, I estimate the impact of NYC's letter-grade accountability system on parent, teacher, and student perceptions of academic expectations and school discipline. I find that accountability typically improves perceptions of the school environment, though after their schools are graded, students report lower academic expectations. Accountability also affects the extent to which stakeholders in the same schools have a shared understanding of the environment. Accountability widens between-group gaps, reduces variation in parent and teacher responses, and increases variation in student perceptions. Additional analyses explore heterogeneity by letter grade and mediating effects of student characteristics. Results provide insight into how accountability influences school climate and have implications for the administration of accountability systems and stakeholder surveys.;Next, I use data from a large-scale program in NYC to determine how field trips affect eighth-grade students' science achievement. Most prior research on field trips is qualitative or descriptive, and no previous studies have estimated effects on standardized test scores. Capitalizing on variation in field trip participation within schools over time, I find small positive effects of exposure to field trips on students' test scores and proficiency. These results are important from a policy perspective, as they demonstrate that enrichment and informal learning experiences can contribute positively to student achievement.;Finally, in a paper co-authored with Amy Ellen Schwartz and Leanna Stiefel, I explore the spillover effects of students who arrive during the academic year on the achievement of stable students. We find small negative effects of exposure to such mid-year entry in the short run, with larger effects for students who are repeatedly exposed to high mid-year entry. Additionally, we explore heterogeneous effects by new student origin, moderating effects of stable student characteristics, and mediating effects of new student characteristics. Our findings have implications for district policies regarding the placement of new students and supports for mobile students and their classmates.