School Musical Statistics: What the Rankings Show

School musical statistics at a glance

School musical programming has a clear pattern in the latest EdTA Play Survey results: a small group of titles keeps returning to the top, while a few modern teen-friendly adaptations continue to hold their own.

This page uses only the matched statistics for school musical statistics, with the survey labels kept visible near each fact so the ranking history stays easy to trace.

Quick takeaways

• The Addams Family ranked #1 in 2023-24 school theatre programs among full-length musicals (EdTA Play Survey).
• Mamma Mia!, Into the Woods, and Little Shop of Horrors stayed near the top across multiple years (EdTA Play Survey).
• Disney titles such as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Frozen JR. show strong recurring appeal in school theatre programs (EdTA Play Survey).
• Teen-edition and high-school version titles appear directly in the top 10, including Chicago: Teen Edition, Legally Blonde: The Musical, and Mean Girls: High School Version (EdTA Play Survey).

Contents

• What the rankings show
• Year-by-year pattern
• Most durable titles
• Modern teen-friendly titles
• How to read the list
• Year comparison table
• Practical takeaways

What the rankings show

The clearest story in the statistics is stability.

Across five school theatre program snapshots from 2019-20 through 2023-24, the same cluster of musicals keeps returning to the top of the list, and several titles reappear in almost the same order. That makes the dataset less about one-off spikes and more about a sustained preference pattern in school theatre programs (EdTA Play Survey).

Two things stand out immediately:

• The Addams Family reaches #1 in 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022-23, and 2023-24, and it sits at #3 in 2021-22 (EdTA Play Survey).
• Mamma Mia! is just as persistent, ranking #2 in 2019-20, 2022-23, and 2023-24, and also taking #1 in 2021-22 (EdTA Play Survey).

That kind of repeated appearance is important because it shows that the top end of school musical programming is not constantly rotating. The list changes, but it changes within a narrow lane.

Year-by-year pattern

The year-by-year ranks make the overall shape of the trend easier to see.

2023-24

The top five full-length musicals in 2023-24 school theatre programs were led by The Addams Family, Mamma Mia!, Into the Woods, Little Shop of Horrors, and a tie between Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Disney’s The Little Mermaid for #5 (EdTA Play Survey).

The rest of the top 10 included The SpongeBob Musical at #7, Chicago: Teen Edition at #8, Legally Blonde: The Musical at #9, and Mean Girls: High School Version at #10 (EdTA Play Survey).

2022-23

The 2022-23 list is nearly identical at the top: The Addams Family held #1, Mamma Mia! held #2, Into the Woods was #3, Little Shop of Horrors was #4, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and Disney’s The Little Mermaid tied for #5 (EdTA Play Survey).

The same modern cluster continued below that with The SpongeBob Musical, Chicago: Teen Edition, Legally Blonde: The Musical, and Mean Girls: High School Version forming the rest of the top 10 (EdTA Play Survey).

2021-22

The 2021-22 list shows a slight shift at the very top. Mamma Mia! moved to #1, followed by Disney’s Frozen JR. at #2 and The Addams Family at #3 (EdTA Play Survey).

Below that, The SpongeBob Musical was #4, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast was #5, You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown was #6, Little Shop of Horrors was #7, Into the Woods was #8, and Disney’s The Little Mermaid tied for #9 with The Wizard of Oz (EdTA Play Survey).

2020-21

The 2020-21 results move The Addams Family back to #1, with You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown at #2 and The Theory of Relativity at #3 (EdTA Play Survey).

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee followed at #4, then Little Women at #5 and Godspell at #6 (EdTA Play Survey).

A three-way tie for #7 included Disney’s High School Musical, Little Shop of Horrors, and then a tie at #8 that included Bright Star, Into the Woods, and Disney’s The Little Mermaid (EdTA Play Survey).

2019-20

The 2019-20 list again puts The Addams Family at #1 and Mamma Mia! at #2 (EdTA Play Survey).

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast ranked #3, Into the Woods ranked #4, Disney’s The Little Mermaid ranked #5, Seussical ranked #6, and Little Shop of Horrors tied for #7 with Roald Dahl’s Matilda: The Musical (EdTA Play Survey).

The Wizard of Oz closed the top 10 at #9 (EdTA Play Survey).

Most durable titles

Some titles do not just appear once. They recur.

The Addams Family

The Addams Family is the single most durable title in this dataset. It ranked #1 in 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022-23, and 2023-24, and it was still #3 in 2021-22 (EdTA Play Survey).

That repeated top placement makes it the clearest anchor title in the statistics. If you are scanning the table for the one production with the strongest long-run presence, this is it.

Mamma Mia!

Mamma Mia! also shows unusually strong staying power. It ranked #2 in 2019-20, #1 in 2021-22, #2 in 2022-23, and #2 in 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

That consistency matters because it suggests the title holds a stable place near the top rather than drifting in and out of relevance.

Into the Woods

Into the Woods appears in the top five or near it across every listed year: #4 in 2019-20, tied for #8 in 2020-21, #8 in 2021-22, #3 in 2022-23, and #3 in 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

The pattern here is not just visibility. It is persistence across multiple ranking bands.

Little Shop of Horrors

Little Shop of Horrors is another repeat performer: #7 tied in 2019-20, tied for #7 in 2020-21, #7 in 2021-22, #4 in 2022-23, and #4 in 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

That move upward in the later years is notable because it shows the title not only staying present but also improving its position.

Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid

Disney titles are woven through the rankings rather than concentrated in one year.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast appears at #3 in 2019-20, #5 in 2021-22, and tied for #5 in both 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

Disney’s The Little Mermaid appears at #5 in 2019-20, tied for #9 in 2021-22, tied for #5 in 2022-23 and 2023-24, and also appears in the 2020-21 tie at #8 (EdTA Play Survey).

That is a broad footprint across the period rather than a single standout year.

Modern teen-friendly titles

One of the most interesting parts of the statistics is how clearly the top 10 includes titles explicitly shaped for younger casts and school settings.

Chicago: Teen Edition ranks #8 in 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

Legally Blonde: The Musical ranks #9 in both 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

Mean Girls: High School Version ranks #10 in both 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey).

These titles matter because they sit directly inside the mainstream ranking set, not off to the side. The data shows that schools are not only choosing classics and Disney properties. They are also choosing adaptations and school-friendly versions that fit the performance environment.

Disney’s Frozen JR. also appears at #2 in 2021-22 (EdTA Play Survey), which reinforces the same point from a different angle: shorter or youth-oriented versions can compete right at the top of the list.

How to read the list

A ranking list like this is easy to skim too fast.

The safer way to read it is to separate the stats into three layers:

1. Titles that repeat at or near the top every year.
2. Titles that rise, fall, and return, but remain within the top 10.
3. Titles that appear briefly and then disappear from the visible cluster.

In this dataset, the first two layers are far more important than the third.

Stable leaders

The stable leaders are The Addams Family, Mamma Mia!, Into the Woods, and Little Shop of Horrors (EdTA Play Survey).

Those titles build the backbone of the ranking story because they recur often enough to define the overall shape of the list.

Recurring family titles

Disney titles like Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Frozen JR. show that familiar family-facing material remains highly visible in school theatre programs (EdTA Play Survey).

The repeated presence of these titles suggests that recognition and broad audience appeal still matter strongly in school programming decisions.

Title families by repeated appearance

Title	Repeated placements in the stats	Notable ranks
The Addams Family	5 years listed	#1 in 2019-20, 2020-21, 2022-23, 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey)
Mamma Mia!	4 years listed	#1 in 2021-22; #2 in 2019-20, 2022-23, 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey)
Into the Woods	5 years listed	#3 in 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey)
Little Shop of Horrors	5 years listed	#4 in 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey)
Disney’s The Little Mermaid	5 years listed	#5 in 2019-20; tied for #5 in 2022-23 and 2023-24 (EdTA Play Survey)

Year comparison table

The fastest way to compare the ranking pattern is to look at the top of each year side by side.

School year	#1	#2	#3	#4	#5
2023-24	The Addams Family	Mamma Mia!	Into the Woods	Little Shop of Horrors	Beauty and the Beast / The Little Mermaid (tie) (EdTA Play Survey)
2022-23	The Addams Family	Mamma Mia!	Into the Woods	Little Shop of Horrors	Beauty and the Beast / The Little Mermaid (tie) (EdTA Play Survey)
2021-22	Mamma Mia!	Disney’s Frozen JR.	The Addams Family	The SpongeBob Musical	Beauty and the Beast (EdTA Play Survey)
2020-21	The Addams Family	You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown	The Theory of Relativity	The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee	Little Women (EdTA Play Survey)
2019-20	The Addams Family	Mamma Mia!	Disney’s Beauty and the Beast	Into the Woods	Disney’s The Little Mermaid (EdTA Play Survey)

The table shows that the rankings are not random from year to year. The list has a stable core, and the top positions mostly rotate among a manageable group of established titles (EdTA Play Survey).

Practical takeaways

If you are using these school musical statistics to understand programming choices, three practical ideas follow directly from the data.

• Familiarity matters: repeat appearances by The Addams Family, Mamma Mia!, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid point to a strong preference for recognizable material (EdTA Play Survey).
• School-friendly versions matter: Chicago: Teen Edition, Legally Blonde: The Musical, Mean Girls: High School Version, and Disney’s Frozen JR. all show that adapted titles can place highly in school theatre programs (EdTA Play Survey).
• The top list is stable enough to treat as a trend, not just a snapshot: five consecutive years show recurring leaders rather than a constantly changing field (EdTA Play Survey).

The result is a ranking story built around continuity. The titles at the top are not there by accident, and they are not appearing only once. They keep returning, which is the strongest signal in the dataset.