The grant money in this article is targeted at states, not at individual schools. Most of the states in the US applied. Applications involved legislative-level effort.

Moreover, the program was structured so that simply assembling an application kickstarted reform efforts.

My read is that the actual money being disbursed is kind of a red herring. The real benefit of the program is that it forces a bunch of states to start piloting teacher-tenure and seniority reforms, which, a few years from now, may serve as models for the rest of the states.