Almost fifty years ago one of my sons had a test question showing a rectangle with a line from one corner to the mid point of the opposite side to the opposite corner along the same line as the first point. The large triangle was shaded. He got the “correct” answer by saying the 1/3 of the area was shaded. When I pointed out to the teacher that 1/2 of the figure was shaded she blathered for a while and finally said that they were just trying to teach them fractions, not areas. She didn’t have a clue and didn’t understand what I was telling her.
When I raised this wrong answer with the teacher I got a similar response as you did: "Well, she knew that she needed two pulleys...."