This paper offers a scenario for how educational assessment might change in response to market forces that affect not only the future of large-scale testing but also society in general. The scenario divides into three generations distinguished by the purpose of testing, test format and content, and the extent to which testing capitalizes on new technology. The first generation lays the basic infrastructure for electronic testing. It combines advances in psychometrics with technology to deliver large-scale tests adaptively. In the second generation, large-scale tests undergo qualitative change, but their purposes and delivery mechanisms remain essentially the same. The last generation brings a rethinking of the purposes and mechanisms of large-scale assessment. One hallmark of this generation will be the emergence of interactive environments that facilitate individual growth in addition to serving the accountability functions normally fulfilled by large-scale tests. Large-scale electronic distance examinations will play a role in this scenario. Whether this scenario represents the way testing will develop, there is no doubt that large-scale testing must change to meet the different demands of the future. (Contains 1 table and 48 references.) (SLD)