Teaching, Conceptualizing, Common Core

As much as I try to avoid the primary/secondary education debates, I'd feel remiss if I didn't pass along two of the pieces from this morning's Web:

1) California teacher Fawn Nguyen interviewed by Cathy O'Neil on Common Core:
http://mathbabe.org/2014/04/23/interview-with-a-high-school-math-teacher-on-the-common-core/

2) Grant Wiggins on "conceptual understanding" (longread +comments):
http://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/conceptual-understanding-in-mathematics/

Fascinating (to me) how something (Common Core) intended to bring unification/standards, is instead stirring up vastly more debate and discussion than likely ever anticipated, with resolution seemingly a long way off. One thing I'm not clear on (as a non-educator), maybe someone can quickly clarify, is Common Core being sharply debated in realms OTHER than math (i.e., English/verbal content), or is the debate mostly a math thing?