I looked at it and figured out what I was screwing up. That is to say, it pointed me toward my label
declaration, which I don't think was using the proper syntax.
I changed my code to:
//This adds a student_gender field
woocommerce_form_field( 'student_gender', array(
'type' => 'select',
'label' => __('Student Gender'),
'placeholder' => _x('', 'placeholder', 'woocommerce'),
'required' => 'true',
'options' => array(
'male' => __('Male', 'woocommerce' ),
'female' => __('Female', 'woocommerce' )
),
), $checkout->get_value( 'student_grade' ));