In an educational system strapped for money and increasingly ruled by standardized tests, arts courses can seem almost a needless extravagance, and the arts are being cut back at schools across the country. One justification for keeping the arts has now become almost a mantra for parents, arts teachers, and even politicians: arts make an individual smarter. It's true that students involved in the arts do better in school and on their SATs than those who are not involved. However, correlation is not causation, and an analysis the authors did several years ago showed no evidence that arts training actually causes scores to rise. In this article, the authors present what they learned from their study. The authors state that the arts are not needed in schools to raise mathematical and verbal skills. The arts are needed because in addition to introducing students to aesthetic appreciation, they teach other modes of thinking that everyone values.