Over recent years, the reform-driven development of education has been one primary idea of the Chinese government under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Above all, the reform of the personnel system, closely related to the interests of teachers, becomes the most sensitive link in the educational reform. To root out the restriction of education system on teachers and enhance their enthusiasm for work, Jia County carried out a reform of teacher personnel system from 2013 to 2016, including breaking the hierarchical restriction on teachers' administrative promotion, decentralizing the power of confirming the teachers' professional titles, eliminating the teachers with the worst performances, practicing performance salary, and other measures. In this study, we tracked 627 teachers regarding their work enthusiasm and stress during the three-year reform, analyzed the data through the Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM), and found that: (1) The teachers' enthusiasm for work increased over time, but did not significantly change with the consideration of the influence of the principals' leadership in teaching. The personnel system reform aiming at motivating teachers failed to work as expected. (2) The teachers' work stress still increased year by year. Therefore, this study concludes that the reform in Jia County failed to fulfill its goals and that the vigorous top-down reform did not lead to ideal results. A reason might be that the reform damaged the vested interests of teachers who represent the deep-rooted nepotism typically in the Chinese education community.Reforms of educational personnel system should give schools a full play regarding educational governance in the future.