We ask that question in tonight’s Fox Report w/ Shepard Smith.

Here in the Atlanta area, Fulton County school officials are experimenting with a pilot project that targets students struggling with math or science.

The “Learn & Earn” program is paying 40 public school students in the Atlanta suburb of Fairburn $8 an hour to attend remedial classes.

The privately funded project is being financed by Charles Loudermilk, the founder and CEO of Atlanta-based Aaron Rents, Inc., through the Learning Makes a Difference Foundation.
The non-profit group’s president, Jackie Cushman, says “Learn & Earn” is the brainchild of her father, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who became concerned after a 2001 congressional commission (Hart-Rudman) identified deficiencies in math and science education as a threat to national security.

Click on the video to see my entire interview with Cushman.

The special election to replace a Georgia legislator who pleaded guilty to money laundering appears headed for a runoff, pitting a national guardsman against a minister.

Dee Dawkins-Haigler, a political consultant who is also an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, received 164 votes in yesterday’s election.

With less than the required “50 percent plus one” majority, Dawkins-Haigler will likely face a June 10 runoff against her apparent runner-up, national guardsman and former police officer Malik Douglas, who received 99 votes.

The day before the election, Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel announced Douglas’s name would be allowed to remain on the official ballot.

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Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel has decided to allow a national guardsman to remain on the ballot of today’s special election to fill the District 93 state house seat.

Malik Douglas is one of six candidates vying to fill the unexpired term of State Representative Ron Sailor, Jr. who resigned in March after pleading guilty to money laundering.

Douglas was deployed in Iraq, when he learned that one of the other candidates, Colet Odenigbo, was challenging the legality of his seeking elected office while on active duty with the military.

The National Guard allowed Douglas to return to the U.S. to appear before an administrative law judge hearing the case. On May 7, Judge Michael Malihi dismissed the case, writing that Odenigbo “did not present any admissible evidence to support his legal argument.”

Late Monday, the day before the election, Secretary Handel formally adopted the judge’s decision, allowing Douglas to remain on the ballot, along with Odenigbo and three other candidates: Dee Dawkins-Haigler, Jim Sendelbach and Traci Waites. A sixth contender, KaTesha Sagers is running as a write-in candidate.

In a press release Handel said, “The State should not create higher hurdles for brave men and women serving in the Armed Forces who want and are otherwise eligible to stand for election here in Georgia.”

Odenigbo tells me he wants to see the outcome of today’s six-way contest before deciding whether to appeal the secretary of state’s decision.

We’re reporting from outside a polling location at Murphy Candler Elementary School in the Atlanta suburb of Lithonia. Click on the video for a look behind the scenes.

MONDAY: No storm clouds today. Just sun and lots of wind. But that wind is slowing the cleanup and recovery.

Homeowners and construction crews are battling to keep tarps from blowing off the roofs of damaged homes. And the winds are slowing utility crews in their efforts to restore electricity to tens of thousand of residents — in some cases knocking out power in neighborhoods unaffected by the Mother’s Day storm.

The National Weather Service has confirmed half a dozen tornadoes struck parts of Georgia yesterday, including the suburban Atlanta neighborhood in Clayton County from where we’ve been doing our live reports (click on the video for a look behind the scenes).

Meteorologists estimate these twisters carried winds between 120 and 130 miles per hour, which would categorize them as EF-2 on the Enhanced Fujita scale.

In Clayton County alone, the storm damaged 163 homes. Local authorities have deemed 45 of those homes uninhabitable.

Clayton is just one of 19 Georgia counties, from the northern part of the state to the coast, reporting damage from Sunday’s storm.

My colleague Marianne Silber continues our coverage today.

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SUNDAY: The Atlanta bureau is en-route to Ellenwood — a suburban Atlanta community hit hard this morning by a storm system that has spawned tornadoes and heavy winds across much of the Midwest and Southeastern United States.

A Georgia Power spokeswoman tells me 87,000 residents are still without electricity statewide, 11,000  of them here in Metro-Atlanta. But the vast majority of those without power, 63-thousand residents, are concentrated in the center of the state — near Macon.

Georgia Power says one of the biggest obstacles is fallen trees. Utility crews are having to cut their way through debris to get to affected areas.

Rescue crews complain of similar problems. According to Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Lisa Janak, 19 Georgia Counties are reporting damage.

This morning’s storm system struck Georgia barely two months after the EF-2 tornado that ripped through downtown Atlanta. The city still shows scars from that storm, with windows boarded up on some of the downtown skyscrapers.

Among the buildings damaged in that March tornado — the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Disaster Assistance. SBA spokesman Richard Daigle compares it to “when the firehouse catches fire,” but insists it did not slow the agency down in processing grants and low-interest loans for businesses and individuals who sustained uninsured losses.

Good thing. His office will, no doubt, find itself busy once again as this active tornado season continues to unleash its fury.

Atlanta field technician Jeff Burton is putting the finishing touches on our story about the One Laptop Per Child program, before we feed it to New York for tonight’s Fox Report w/ Shepard Smith.

One Laptop Per Child is a non-profit organization that designs low-cost computers, primarily for children in developing countries.

However, the City of Birmingham, AL has purchased 15,000 of the $200 “XO” laptops for use in public schools.

The story has multiple angles — technology, education, world poverty and business.

In fact, we will be turning separate versions of the story — one for tonight’s Fox Report, which focuses on why a “Third World” program has attracted the attention of educators and city officials in Birmingham. The other version of this story, which we are turning for Fox Business Network on Monday, focuses on One Laptop Per Child’s impact on the computer industry and the global economy.

For both stories, we interviewed Nicholas Negroponte, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer scientist who founded One Laptop Per Child. Click on the video to watch an extended version of his comments.

News photographers follow women in pioneer dresses as they walk to a Texas court that will eventually determine the fate of 416 children removed during the April 3 raid of their polygamist ranch.

If only this juxtaposition of 21st and 19th Century images were the only clash going on.

There are literally hundreds of attorneys representing the different interests in this case — government, parents and each child.

In fact, the hearing has brought so many people to the small city of San Angelo that local hotels are all booked. Residents have opened their homes to accommodate many of the volunteer lawyers representing the children.

The hearing goes into its second day with attorneys for the state presenting testimony that children at the ranch were sexually and physically abused, while attorneys for the parents question whether unproven allegations justify state authorities taking all of the children from an entire community.

Meanwhile, far from the hearing, police in Colorado Springs, CO have announced the arrest of a woman on a charge of false reporting to authorities. Police say the Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs yesterday “as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas,” but would release no other details.

Our Denver Bureau is investigating that angle of the story that continues to unfold even as I type these words.

They’re teaching Bible at the “Home of the Blue Devils.” Lebanon High School in Wilson County, TN is among the first in the Volunteer State to offer an elective class on the good book’s impact on culture.

“It is the best-selling book of all time and our parents thought it should be taught in our high schools,” said Mickey Hall, deputy director of Wilson County Schools.

According to Hall, his school district has trained instructors not to inject their own religious views into the course.

Bible class advocates point to the book’s influence on history, law and literature.

“Biblical literacy - as with understanding Plato, Aristotle or the plays of Shakespeare - is an important part of being a literate citizen of the world,” said Ralph Reed, former director of the Christian Coalition.

Tennessee’s attorney general recently issued an opinion that Bible classes in public schools are legal, provided they stick to academic analysis of the book and don’t become sermons. That opinion paved the way for pending legislation that would authorize the state to create a non-religious elective course on the Bible and its influences.

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From day one of the manhunt, Onslow County, NC authorities assured me the question was not “if,” but “when,” Marine Cpl. Cesar Laurean would be arrested. And that seems to have been the attitude of their Mexican counterparts.

Their optimism appears to have been justified last night, when police in the rural Mexican township of Tacambaro arrested the prime suspect in the December murder of pregnant Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach.

I’m doing live shots from the Atlanta bureau while my colleagues, correspondent Marianne Silber and producer Brooks Blanton travel to Jacksonville, NC, where Onslow County authorities have scheduled a 2 PM news conference.

Adam Housley was recently in Mexico for an unrelated assignment. But he’s been able to gain some interesting details on this story from his law enforcement contacts there. Be sure to read his blog below.

Spring tornadoes are nothing new to the South. What’s different this year is their frequency.

As we leave our bureau in Midtown Atlanta, I glance at the towering Westin Peachtree Plaza Hotel, which is still missing many of its windows in the wake of the tornado that tore through the downtown tourist district March 14.

Today, we’re heading to Alabama to cover damage from yet another string of severe storms.

Heading West on I-20, there is a heavy downpour. The highway is slick. But people don’t seem to be slowing down.

We’ve witnessed some reckless driving — people following too close and, in one extreme case, a car using the interstate’s narrow left shoulder to pass a truck. We’ve also driven past half a dozen accident scenes.

During severe weather, everyone’s so focused on the wrath of nature, they often forget the human element can be equally (if not more) dangerous.

The Atlanta bureau is on standby for severe weather duty. Right now, we’re watching a string of severe storms extending from Texas to New England.

Overnight, a particularly strong cell passed directly over the airport in North Little Rock, AR destroying a hangar and flipping over several small planes. In nearby suburbs, heavy winds downed trees and power lines — leaving more than 38-thousand people in the dark.

Today, there are watches and warnings throughout the South for potential floods and tornadoes as the storm system continues its eastward path.

Right now in Atlanta, we’re just experiencing cloudy skies and a light drizzle. But some of the downtown skyscrapers still have broken windows — a reminder of the tornado that ripped through one of the city’s main tourist districts on March 14.

As I type these words, photographer Cappy Cochran is setting up her equipment on our bureau’s rooftop parking deck, which provides a panoramic view of the Atlanta skyline.

We may do live shots from there later in the day. But we also have our suitcases packed in case we need to travel to storm damage in some other part of the region.

It all depends on what the weather does.