@Hanna - But “Duke is a reach school for you” is essentially a nice way of saying “You are not good enough for Duke.” Which isn’t a value judgment on the student’s very identity as a person, but rather their application package.
I’m not doubting that teenagers stretch the truth or deliberately misinterpret adults’ statements for their own ends, but this doesn’t seem like an out of the ordinary thing for a teacher to say. Besides that, the important thing for the OP is to deal with the impact - the exact words don’t really matter with respect to helping the daughter recover and make decisions.