Great news, Politics K-12 readers! No, we’re not getting a prime-time presidential debate focused solely on K-12 education, but this is almost as good ... Andrew Ujifusa, of State EdWatch fame, is joining the blog!

For the past three years, Andrew has brought his signature blend of wonkiness and humor to Education Week‘s state coverage.

He’s followed every twist and turn of the “swamp fight” in Louisiana over the Common Core State Standards; hit classrooms in Indiana to find out what it’s like to be in standards no man’s land; tracked the proxy war over the K-12 soul of the Democratic Party that was last year’s California state chief’s race; investigated why state chiefs don’t stick around nearly as long as they used to ... and done it all really, really well.

Before joining Education Week, Andrew covered Montgomery County and Maryland education policy for the Gazette newspapers. While there, he also went to Haiti to cover how folks from the Maryland suburbs helped that country recover from its devastating 2010 earthquake. Before that, he covered schools, state politics, and other issues for a weekly newspaper in Mississippi. And before that? He taught high school English in rural Japan.

Please send Andrew congratulations, tips, story ideas, and an invite to play basketball at the White House against President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. (Okay, fine, we understand if you can’t come through on that last one.)