"Decoupling" is the process of removing the experience requirement as a prerequisite for taking the exam. About a dozen states have decoupled in the last few years. Those States now have two groups of examinees: examinees who pass and automatically get their license; and examinees who pass and then get a "boxed check" for a later application for license. The problem is that in many of those States the existing licensing system aren't designed to handle two groups of examinees. It's too expensive to redo their whole licensing system for a short-term problem, so it's cheaper to just do it manually for a few years. The wait may seem like a lot to "us" but it may only be handful of worker-days per year for the State and its not really worth the investment to upgrade.
The end result is that in some of those recently decoupled States like: Florida, Georgia, and Colorado is that they have really bad growing pains for a few cycles as they manually adjust to the new system. As time progresses, the number of legacy candidates decrease and the time spent on manual adjustments drops off dramatically too.
