The author situates language education policy and scholarship on Academic English within the broader historical context of standard language ideology, the view that the language variety of socio-economic elites is intrinsically more complex than other varieties. It is argued that the current predominant focus on the nature of school language gives the impression that school language alone can express complex ideas or use complex grammar, leaving little conceptual space for leveraging children's home language varieties. The author calls for a return to historical commitments to an asset-based approach to school and home language differences in mainstream language education research.