capture id on click

@ryan, take notice that the anchor function already generates the <a> and </a> tags, so don't add those yourself.
This:

PHP Code:

echo anchor('controllerName/syllabus/'.$row->ID, 'button label'); 


has this output:
<a href="controllerName/syllabus/x">button label</a>

And as PaulID suggested, don't put the <li> tags inside the anchor, but around it, like this:

PHP Code:

echo '<li> . anchor('controllerName/syllabus/'.$row->ID, 'button label') . '</li>';