DS6 was "differentiated" in Kindergarten. It consisted of them handing him some logic puzzles, never explaining them to him, marking his answers wrong and putting them in a folder. They were handed to me as further proof that he wasn't gifted.
They had differentiated grouped reading, but DS was moved from the top group to the middle group because it didn't occur to the teacher that a child shouldn't regress in his reading.
The one thing they did that I thought was going to be great was to create a program for the Kindergartners. There were 6 students and they were working on individual research projects. It was supposed to be worked on in class when he had time on his hands. I really was excited about it and was very happy with their effort. Until DS6 and I stumbled upon the book the GT teacher had given him for his research. It was a book about sea horses (the topic he picked) with 4 words per page, 10 pages total. No wonder he kept coming home asking me questions about sea horses and then rolling his eyes when I asked him what his research book said.
In my experience, it is very easy for the teacher to make differentiation worse than no accommodation, especially if they don't believe there is a need for it. In our case, the differentiation that was offered made things worse because he was being given things that might have been interesting but no one would tell him what they were or give him the tools to properly complete the project ("See what you're missing out on by sitting through counting to 100 and learning what 'P' says?").
