Past research suggests that children’s academic achievement is heritable (de Zeeuw, Geus, Boomsma, 2015; Lee et al., 2018; Okbay et al., 2016, with both genetic studies and intervention studies also showing that it is malleable and subject to environmental influences (Mullender-Wijnsma et al., 2016; Sasser et al., 2017). We used a parent-offspring adoption study to examine heritable and environmental influences on academic achievement in a sample of 344 seven-year old adopted children and their biological and adoptive parents. Results indicated that adoptees’ achievement scores were correlated with their biological parents’ achievement scores but not with their adoptive parents’ achievement scores, suggesting genetic influences. However, examination of mean achievement scores indicated that adoptees’ scores were not significantly different than adoptive parents’ (p’s > .05) but were significantly greater than their biological parents’ (p’s < .05), suggesting promotive effects of the rearing environment. The positive effect of the rearing environment was present even when biological parents scored > 1 standard deviations below the mean. Education practice and policy implications are discussed.