Odd problem - not retrieving any records

I have a table of records in which no records are being read using the getRecords code.

First, let me start by mentioning I do not have any publish/remove dates, hidden flags or anything like that on this section.

Here is some code from the header. I've included a second table in which I'm getting records no problem

list($coursesRecords, $coursesMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'courses',
));
print_r($coursesRecords);
$coursesRecord = $coursesRecords[0]; // get first record

//get all of the instructors - if we are displaying instructors, we will loop thru for each one
list($instructorsRecords, $instructorsMetaData) = getRecords(array(
'tableName' => 'instructors',
));
print_r($instructorsRecords);

The instructors print no problem, the course I'm not getting anything.

I'm also getting back records for several other tables, so I'm a bit confused as to what this could be.

Is there a "debugging" mode such that I can see what's going on in getRecords?

Thanks,
Gary.