The traditional theory of educational economics believes that teachers’ education level is valuable: more education generally means higher pay, which would result in better incentive for teaching. However, this is not true in developing countries. How the teachers play their role in teaching is a critical issue for addressing the relationship between the teachers’ performance and the teaching quality. It is then important to analysis teaching incentive from the perspective of teachers’ career development. The data from the Chinese countryside show that the teachers’ pay in the countryside is largely dependent on their teaching years and rank, not related significantly to their teaching quality. The present paper proposes that better career development could improve the teaching quality through teachers’ incentive and teaching effort.