This article asserts that a carefully administered informal reading inventory (IRI) provides important information on low-achieving readers that is "not" provided by an end-of-grade standardized reading test. Using case studies of students' IRI performance, we address the concept of instructional level and the necessity of teaching low readers at the appropriate difficulty level--"meeting them where they are"--in the classroom and resource room. In doing so, we note that instructional-level (or below-grade-level) reading can, over time, drive low readers' print-processing skill (accuracy and rate), eventually enabling them, through purposeful practice, to "self-improve" their overall reading (including comprehension). While such improvement may not show up on an end-of-year standardized test, it will show up on an end-of-year IRI.