. >> reporter: anthony abraham jack is an assistant professor at the harvard education school of educatione privilege poor" how elite colleges are failing students. >> to understand students, you have to know where they come from. i. to know where a zip code can tell you where a child can end up. we need to make sure we understand not just the differences between student's test scores all that kind of stuff. we understand how inequality works and how it's localized in neighborhood schools. how is that related to george harvard middle school? a assistant principal saw me fooling around with my students and said you don't have a potential to become a harvardite. they create an award for the best student in the year 8th grade year because of things i did, she had to hand it to me. that moment stuck with me because i felt like there was a tally. if i didn't make it would be evidence that she was right. the fact that someone in public education is funded by a tax base that's hyper localized yet we know the way in which economic opportunity was highly racialized. we know the way segregation work

. >> anthony abraham jack is an assistant professor at the harvard graduate school of education and author poor. how elite colleges are affecting disadvantaged students. >> to understand where they're going, you have to know where they come from. what does it mean that a zip code can tell you so much more about where a child will end up than any other fact you can learn about that child. we need to know we need to understand not just the difference in test scores. we need to understand how inequality works in neighborhoods and schools. i was admitted to george washington carver middle school. an assistant principal saw me fooling around. she walked up to me and said you don't have the potential. >> that's not what you say. >> they created an award for the best student in the school my eighth grade year because of what i did and she had to hand it to me. >>. [ laughter ] >> that moment stuck with me. i felt like there was a tally. if i didn't make it, it was evidence that she was right. >> the fact that public education is funded by a tax base, that's hyper localized. yet we know the way in