She has long been a respected voice in education policy. But it took a speech by her son to spread her message to the general public.

That son happens to be the actor Matt Damon. Carlsson-Paige introduced him at a 2011 rally to protest the Obama administration’s education policies. Damon took the podium and delivered a heartfelt speech, which later raced through social media, decrying a national obsession with standardized testing.

“I don’t know where I would be today if my teachers’ job security was based on how I performed on some standardized test,” Damon told the crowd. “If they had to spend most of their time desperately drilling us and less time encouraging creativity and original ideas … I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. I do know that.”

Then he told the teachers in the crowd how important they were to him. “The next time you encounter some simple-minded, punitive policy that’s been driven into your life by some corporate reformer who has literally never taught anyone anything … please know that there are millions of us behind you,” Damon said. “We love you, we thank you and we will always have your back.”

Damon had read the speech to his mom moments before delivering it to the protesters. Carlsson-Paige, sitting alone on a bench in the summer heat, had wept as she’d listened. Her son had captured the essence of her life’s work — her passion for educating the whole child, for making learning fun — and was using his celebrity to spread the word far and wide.

“It was a wonderful experience for me,” Carlsson-Paige says.

At 70, Carlsson-Paige has retired from full-time teaching but still serves as a professor emerita at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She writes frequently on education policy and the virtues of play; her most recent book is “Taking Back Childhood: A Proven Roadmap for Raising Confident, Creative, Compassionate Kids.” In her spare time, she paints, meditates, practices yoga — and puts her professional expertise into practice while playing with her seven grandchildren.

Carlsson-Paige talked to POLITICO from her home in Somerville, Massachusetts.

When you started your career in early childhood education, did you have difficulty getting people to take you seriously as an academic? Was there a perception that it was a less-than-credible field for research because it’s primarily the domain of women?

It felt like a calling for me to go into education. If there were biases about going into early childhood education, I wasn’t affected by them. … [But] I was always aware that early childhood educators don’t earn the same respect or compensation that other educators have. That’s starting to change … [due in part to the] increasing amount of science about the importance of early childhood education. So the field, if anything, during the time I’ve been in it, has been increasingly appreciated by society.

Is it important to attract more men into the profession as early childhood educators?

Oh yes, absolutely. And I think as the levels of professionalism and compensation rise, we’ll see more men coming into the field. Children really need to have both men and women around them from the earliest years. … We need more diversity in all ways, so all kids see themselves reflected in their teachers, because there’s a whole emotional and social dimension to education — it isn’t just learning facts and numbers.

You’ve been outspoken in arguing that young children need fewer tests and more play time. What concerns you about the direction of the education reform movement?

This is a dark time and a really difficult time in education because there has become almost an obsession with testing. … There’s a policy push to evaluate teachers with test scores, to evaluate schools with test scores. All this has narrowed the curriculum tremendously and has put teachers in a place of fear. The public has been quite misled to think that data is the way you measure schools. But the most important qualities of a good school are not quantifiable. … The thrill of learning and the joy of learning are lost when children are just drilled and tested to such excess, which is happening even in pre-K and kindergarten. … It’s a diversion from the root cause of the achievement gap, which is income inequality.

You have expressed concern about the Common Core, which calls for kindergarteners to learn certain skills, such as counting to 100 and identifying all uppercase and lowercase letters. Can most children do that?

Some can and some can’t. There’s a big range in [which] children learn these skills in the early years. Quality education for young kids is disappearing. … Naming the letter B and saying it goes “buh” is not really relevant to what good education is. It’s good to know; it’s not that you shouldn’t know any letters. It’s just that building an understanding of literacy is much, much more than that. There’s a tremendous relationship between oral language and reading, so good early childhood education involves creating experiences that are going to foster social interaction and fantasy play. … What we’re seeing instead is a lot of little kids sitting in chairs getting drilled on the letter B.

You’re an accomplished scholar, a distinguished professor, a published author (several times over) and the recipient of many national honors. Yet you are often referred to as “Matt Damon’s mom.” I’m sure you’re proud of him, but how does it feel to be defined by your son’s accomplishments?

This is the thing: I am Matt’s mother, and being Matt’s mother is an important part of my life experience. I was a single mom. I raised two boys, Matt and Kyle, and was very involved in their lives. … The fact is, I’m so happy to see how Matt’s living his life. … He is living out the values he learned growing up, so I always feel kind of buoyed by his accomplishments, not diminished. I feel part of it. … He’s a celebrity and I’m not, and I’m realistic about that. People don’t care about me, and I understand that. Though I wish they did, because I’d like them to hear about these education issues!

Matt’s major work is with filmmaking and Water.org, the nonprofit he founded. But Matt really understands the issues with education. We talk about it a lot. He can’t give it the kind of energy that I do, but he’s lent his support when he can.

Why did you decide to go into education?

I went into the field of education right after this really vibrant period of the ’60s. The War on Poverty and the Great Society were happening … and there was a lot of talk among politicians and policymakers about equal opportunity … [and] redistributing resources to the neediest schools. It was a time when the idealism of youth could easily connect with what was happening in education. I, along with a lot of young people, had this desire to make the world better.

I still have hope in education because no matter what’s going on with the adults in the world — and I certainly hope that changes over time, because it’s grim — when you’re working with children, it’s very uplifting. They’re very open to cooperation.