But fourth-grade boys scored higher than fourth-grade girls.

"It's like a hurricane is coming," Gary Lincoff, the father of a fourth-grade boy on Manhattan's Upper West Side, said last week, shaking his head ruefully.

For instance, after reading the special Spider-man comic book, a fourth-grade boy told a researcher, "That's exactly what happened to me."

And the resentful fourth-grade boys had a wasted day, with teachers reluctant to teach because so many girls were absent.

This year, all 38 of the school's third- and fourth-grade boys participated.

Today he teaches a class of 10 emotionally disturbed fourth-grade boys at Brookhaven Intermediate School in Killeen, Tex.

THEY were kids in a gym class, tossing up shots, talking big and dreaming bigger as fourth-grade boys do.

During the reception a fourth-grade boy asked me what kind of computer I use.

The principal of a Roman Catholic elementary school in Hackensack was charged yesterday with sexually assaulting a fourth-grade boy and endangering the welfare of another, prosecutors said.

A teacher and another school employee will face termination proceedings in connection with the strip search of four fourth-grade boys at a Bronx elementary school, the city's Department of Education said yesterday.