Senate Republicans have new ideas for public schools in North Carolina, and their coming budget proposal aims to reshape early-grade classrooms, teacher pay models and even the school calendar.

Budget writers are working to refine their proposed spending plan for the coming year. Senate Leader Phil Berger described what big changes would be ahead for the public education system in North Carolina.

Among the ideas:

Cutting teacher assistants, possibly in all but kindergarten classes.

Shrinking class size in grades 1-3, toward a goal of a 15-to-1 student-teacher ratio.

Paying teachers based on performance instead of seniority.

Extending students' school year by five days (by converting teacher workdays to instructional days).

"The system that we've got is not working right now," Berger said, citing graduation rates, remedial college courses and the 23 percent of third-graders are not reading on grade level.

The goal is improving early grades, Berger said, and making sure children can read by the time they leave third grade. If children are struggling at the end of second grade, they should be placed in an intensive reading environment for third grade, he said, and should not be promoted until they are proficient readers.

"The most important thing we can do for students, particularly students in the earlier classrooms, is to have a qualified teacher in front of those students," he said. "Couple that with the importance of that qualified teacher having fewer students, rather than more students. We think that those are just keys to building a successful education system."

Cutting the teaching assistants will free money to begin to shrink class size in first through third grades, Berger said. Getting to a 15-1 ratio will take time, but he hopes to get that done within four years.

Berger's staff zeroed in on a widely cited Tennessee study of class size, which showed small classes produced better results for children, compared to normal-size classes or those with a teacher assistant.

Education leaders say lowering class size could make a big difference. "I am for any measure that is based in research, and we know the smaller the classes we have in kindergarten through grade 3, the more time the teacher can spend with each child," said June Atkinson, state superintendent of public instruction. "What I've seen in research is lowering it by one student or two students would not have a dramatic impact, so you've got to lower it sufficiently."

Bill McNeal, executive director of N.C. Association of School Administrators, said teacher assistants are often a vital part of the classroom.

"Somehow there seems to be a little bit of a contradiction when I see the TA being removed, when in some cases, those people work as a second classroom teacher," he said.