Consonants and rhyming are pretty typical early K phonemic awareness skills.

I really think there probably was no skill gap, nor were the teachers really wrong. You were most likely just temporarily misplaced because they hadn't finished kindergarten screening and placement testing yet, or you weren't in the mood when they did the original screening. It sounds like something more in the nature of a small paperwork issue that was quickly corrected, rather than anything of educational significance.

...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...