Mysqli Prepare Statement - Returning False, but Why?

Question

I have a function that generates a prepared INSERT statement based on an associative array of column names and values to be inserted into that column and a table name (a simple string):

function insert ($param, $table) {
        $sqlString = "INSERT INTO $table (".implode(', ',array_keys($param)).') VALUES ('.str_repeat('?, ', (count($param) - 1)).'?)';
        if ($statement = $this->conn->prepare($sqlString)):
         $parameters = array_merge(array($this->bindParams($param), $param));
   call_user_func_array(array($statement, 'bind_param', $parameters));
         if (!$statement->execute()):
          die('Error! '.$statement->error());
         endif;
         $statement->close();
         return true;
        else:
         die("Could Not Run Statement");
        endif;
    }

My problem is that $this->conn->prepare (it's part of a class, conn is a NEW mysqli object, which works with no issues) returns false, but does not give me a reason why!

Here is a sample $sqlString that gets built for the prepare statement:

INSERT INTO students (PhoneNumber, FirstName, MiddleInit, LastName, Email, Password, SignupType, Active, SignupDate) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)

Can anyone see a problem with this parameterized statement? Any reason the prepare function would return false?

Answer 1

I'm copying the solution into this answer so this can be given an upvote, otherwise the question will appear in the "unanswered questions" forever. I'm marking this answer CW so I won't get any points.

@Andrew E. says:

I just turned on mysqli_report(MYSQLI_REPORT_ALL) to get a better understanding of what was going on - turns out that one of my field names was incorrect - you'd think that prepare() would throw an exception, but it fails silently.