He was born in Princeton, New Jersey, to academic George Steiner, a French-born American Holocaust survivor of Austrian-Jewish descent who emigrated to New York to escape Nazism,[3] and was raised in Cambridge, England.
He strengthened assessment and accountability systems to evaluate learning outcomes in the NEA’s arts grants programs.
He left his position at the NEA in 2005 to serve as the Klara and Larry Silverstein Dean at the Hunter College-CUNY's School of Education.
They include advancing the New York State Regents Reform Agenda by leading the successful $700M NYS application for the Federal Race to the Top Award and other competitively sourced funds.
In 2010 he approved a controversial waiver of job requirement standards for publisher Cathie Black, for chancellor of the New York City Department of Education.
During the COVID crisis, Steiner has argued for acceleration learning strategies instead of remediation in webinars with UNESCO and The World Bank.